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“I don’t mean to say anything about them. I don’t want to try to make them out to be quite such soft roes as you would have me think they are. I don’t want to talk of them; I want to talk of you.”
“Of me? Well?”
“Yes, and of me.”
“Excellent topics both.”
“Yes; but the two of us only make up one topic, and this is it. Now listen. Your mother asked me to call and have tea some afternoon. If she hadn’t asked me I would have asked her permission to do so. I came pretty soon after her invitation, didn’t I?”
“I’m so sorry that she has a Committee meeting this afternoon.”
“It doesn’t make any difference to me—that is, in what I have to say to you. And what I have to say to you is this; I came early to see you and I’m coming often—very often—you have no notion how often—I don’t believe I quite know it myself. Now no matter how often I come I want you to understand distinctly from the first that I disclaim all intention of using Plato as an umbrella to sit under with you. I am coming in a strictly anti-Platonic spirit.”
He had grown a bit red and she had flushed all over.
“Go on—go on; tell me all you have to say; it’s quite—quite—funny—yes, funny,” she said, and there was something of bewilderment in her voice. “I never—never—heard anything so—so queer—so straightforward. Go on.”
“I have really said all that I came to say—maybe a trifle more,” he said. “I’m not going to make an ass of myself leading you to fancy that I’m coming here as a casual acquaintance having no designs in my heart against you—I mean, for you. I don’t want you to fancy that I’m coming here to talk to you about books, or pictures, for the sake of exchanging opinions in a strictly platonic way. No, I want you to know from the outset that I’m coming as a possible lover.”
“I understand—oh, quite clearly—you have made the position quite clear to me; only let me tell you at once, Lord Lullworth that—that——”
“Now there you go treating me as disdainfully as if I had actually declared myself to be your lover. I’m nothing of the sort, let me tell you. I’m only the rough material out of which a lover may be formed. I’m a possible lover, so I should be treated very gently—just the way that you would treat a baby feeling that it may one day grow up to be a man. At the same time nothing may really come of the business. Cupid, the god of love is always shown as a child, because the people who started the idea had before them the statistics of infant mortality; so many little Loves die when they are young and never grow up at all.”
“They do—they do. Isn’t it a blessing? You have only seen me twice and yet you——”
“My dear Miss Severn, I’ve seen you very often. I have been looking at you for the past eighteen months, and I thought you the nicest girl I had ever seen. I found out who you were, and it was I who got old Shirley to get up his dinner to give me a chance of meeting you; and I found you nicer even than I allowed myself to hope you would be. So I’m coming to see you very often on the chance that something may come of it. If after a while—a year or so—you find me a bit of a bore, you just tell me to clear off, and I’ll clear without a back word. Now you know just what my idea is. I’m not a lover yet but I may grow up to be a lover. You may tell Lady Severn all this—and your father too, if you think it worth while—if you think anything will come of the business.”
“I won’t trouble either of them. It’s not worth while.”
“I dare say you are right—only... Well, you are forewarned anyway. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said she. “This is the second time I have seen you in my life. I don’t care how soon you come again, but if you never do come again I promise you that my pillow will not be wet with bitter tears of disappointment.”
“Same here,” he cried briskly, when he was at the door. He laughed and went out and closed the door. In a moment, however, he opened the door, and took a step towards her.
“No; I find that I was wrong—I should not have said ‘same here.’ As a matter of fact, I find that I’m more of a lover than I thought. Since I have been with you here I am twice the lover that I was when I entered this room. No, I should be greatly disappointed if you were to tell me that I must not return.”
“Then I won’t; only... oh, take my advice and hurry away before I have time to say what I have on my mind to say.”
“I know it already; and I also know that you’ll never tell it to me. Good-bye again.”
When she was quite sure that he had gone—quite gone, beyond the likelihood of another return to say something that he had omitted to say or to take back something that he had already said, she threw herself back on a sofa and yawned ostentatiously—almost insultingly at her own reflection in a mirror that hung in the centre of one of the silk panels—and then it seemed that it was for the first time in her life that she perceived how curious was the design of the mirror. The silvered glass was a Florentine one and at one curved edge it was cut with a charming intaglio of a boy chasing a butterfly. On the opposite curve there was a girl with a bird on her finger. Butterflies and birds were cut all over the glass except in the centre. The frame of the mirror was of beaten silver, and the design was that of a number of cupids bending, as it were, over the brink of the glass to see the face that it reflected. And some were fixing their arrows in their little silver bows to shoot at the glass and its reflection.
She lay back and laughed quite merrily at the thought that often as she had looked at that charming work of art, she had never before noticed the significance of the design. It interested her so greatly just now that she actually rose from her sofa and stood before it, examining its infinity of detail for several minutes. Then she threw herself once again back among her cushions and laughed.
She had never before had such a funny interview with any one in all her life, she thought, and the funny part of it all was to be found in the seriousness of the man. If he had meant to be jocular he would have been a dead failure. But he had been desperately serious from the moment he had entered the room, and had gone on talking gravely as if he had been talking sense and not nonsense.
