“I love to hear you talk vehemently,” she remarked.
“It’s because I have learned to feel vehemently,” said Martin.
“Since when?”
“Since I first met you,” said Martin, with sudden daring.
“It’s not my example you’ve been profiting by,” she laughed. “You’ve never heard me raving at a poor old mummy.”
Cool and casual, she warded off the shaft of his implied declaration. He had not another weapon to hand. He said:
“You’ve said things equally violent when you have felt deeply. That is your great power. You live intensely. Everything you do you put your whole self into. You have the faculty of making everybody around you do the same.”
At that moment Mr. Watney-Holcombe appeared at the mouth of the tomb, mopping his rubicund face. At Lucilla he shook a playful fist.
“Not another darned monument for me this day.”
“I don’t seem to have succeeded with him, anyway,” she said in a low and ironical voice.