Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/249

Rh “I thought we ought not to go on to be lovers in any way that would affect you, touch you too closely.... I was sorry—I had kissed you.”

“Not I. No. Don’t be sorry for that. I am glad we have fallen in love, more glad than I have been of anything else in my life, and glad we have spoken plainly.... Though we have to part. And——”

Her whisper came close to him. “For a whole day yet, all round the clock twice, you and I have one another.”

Miss Seyffert began speaking as soon as she was well within earshot.

“I don’t know the name of a single one of these flowers,” she cried, “except the bluebells. Look at this great handful I’ve gotten! Springtime in Italy doesn’t compare with it, not for a moment.”

Because Belinda Seyffert was in the dicky behind them with her alert interest in their emotions all too thinly and obviously veiled, it seemed more convenient to Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont to talk not of themselves but of Man and Woman and of that New Age according to the prophet Martineau, which Sir Richmond had partly described and mainly invented and ascribed to his departed friend. They talked anthropolog-