Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/129

Rh averted came into her mind. She thought these all over, and then, taking his arm, put them into speech.

"I shall love to show you the dreadful little house," she said. "I shall love to go down to the kitchen and boil the water and cut the bread and butter. No; you shall not come and help. I want to do it for you. You will have just time to eat the bread and butter that I shall cut, and then you shall go to the station. Yes; I will walk as far with you. Oh, how much simpler if you could stop and let us tell Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Catherine what has—has happened. But you mustn't; I want to be alone with the knowledge for a little—oh, you must really give me that! I want to make it real to me myself, before I tell anybody. Yes; it is real—I know that—but I want to get a little used to it before anybody knows. So—it is hard to say—don't come here to-morrow, even now, when nothing matters except It. I want to sit on the beach again—can you understand, I wonder?—and look at the sea again as I—we saw it, and make all things mine. They are yours just at present: you have taken them from me; and they must be mine again. But not mine any longer, nor yours, but ours."

For one moment Lucia wondered at herself. All that she had felt was that Edgar must go away before they returned from their expedition to Trew, and that he must not come to-morrow, while Maud would be still in the house. That she would be able to explain things to Maud eventually, she did not doubt; but she was not prepared to explain this at once. Things had to be thought over; it was obviously wise to give the best possible aspect to events, especially if they were events that one had caused oneself. And at the present moment their aspect was rather ugly; somehow that aspect must be painted over. She must find a new light to cast on it which should make it appear beautiful. But that she had to think over. It would not do at all if he came again to-morrow in the character of accepted lover.

Her reasons for not wishing to see him the next day enchanted him.

"Yes, yes," he cried. "You make me see. You tell me what I feel also, though I did not know it. I want to be alone with the knowledge for a little—to let it burn in its secret shrine"

Again she had raised the genie over which she had no control. That which she had suggested for her own petty, paltry reasons appealed to him on another ground, in ways of which she had no conception. Though it was charming to find that her wishes on