Nothing happened. He was not perplexed by the sudden change. “This is the reaction,” he thought. “We shall see what comes of it.” He looked about him. A bottle of water stood on one of the tables. “Likely to be useful,” he concluded, “in case she feels faint.”
Zo had been listening; Zo saw her way to getting noticed again. Not quite sure of herself this time, she appealed to Carmina. “Didn’t he say, just now, he wanted to know?”
Carmina neither heard nor heeded her. Zo tried Benjulia next. “Shall I tell you what we do in the schoolroom, when we want to know?” His attention, like Carmina’s attention, seemed to be far away from her. Zo impatiently reminded him of her presence—she laid her hand on his knee.
It was only the hand of a child—an idle, quaint, perverse child—but it touched, ignorantly touched, the one tender place in his nature, unprofaned by the infernal cruelties which made his life acceptable to him; the one tender place, hidden so deep from the man himself, that even his far-reaching intellect groped in vain to find it out. There, nevertheless, was the feeling which drew him to Zo, contending successfully with his medical interest in a case of nervous derangement. That unintelligible sympathy with a child looked dimly out of his eyes, spoke faintly in his voice, when he replied to her. “Well,” he said, “what do you do in the schoolroom?”
“We look in the dictionary,” Zo answered. “Carmina’s got a dictionary. I’ll get it.”
She climbed on a chair, and found the book, and laid it on Benjulia’s lap. “I don’t so much mind trying to spell a word,” she explained. “What I hate is being asked what it means. Miss Minerva won’t let me off. She says, Look. I won’t let you off. I’m Miss Minerva and you’re Zo. Look!”
He humoured her silently and mechanically—just as he had humoured her in the matter of the stick, and in the matter of the tickling. Having opened the dictionary, he looked again at Carmina. She had not moved; she seemed to be weary enough to fall asleep. The reaction—nothing but the reaction. It might last for hours, or it might be at an end in another minute. An interesting temperament, whichever way it ended. He opened the dictionary.
“Love?” he muttered grimly to himself. “It seems I’m an object of compassion, because I know nothing about love. Well, what does the book say about it?”
He found the word, and ran his finger down the paragraphs of explanation which followed. “Seven meanings to Love,” he remarked. “First: An affection of the mind excited by beauty and worth of any kind, or by the qualities of an object which communicate pleasure. Second: Courtship. Third: Patriotism, as the love of country. Fourth: Benevolence. Fifth: The object beloved. Sixth: A word of endearment. Seventh: Cupid, the god of love.”
He paused, and reflected a little. Zo, hearing nothing to amuse her, strayed away to the window, and looked out. He glanced at Carmina.