Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/223

224 Rochester, with equal art but inferior success, had tried his hardest to get a word alone with her—in vain. Always she was with Lucilla, with Mrs. Doveton, with Gladys, with one of the dismal and non-paying guests; and if he did find her alone she was always on her way to keep a most urgent appointment with one or other of her unconscious chaperones. Lucilla, who had herself no desire for tête-à-têtes had seconded Jane ably, if unconsciously. And this had gone on and on. Now Jane looked at the book and said, "Yes, very pretty," and very, very slightly shook her head.

"Oh, but look at this!" said Rochester, turning the pages quickly. She looked. And this is what she read: "There is a secret door. Let me show it you first."

Oh, well—if it was only a secret door. . . And it was then that she moved slowly towards the window, Rochester following with an admirably simulated air of it's being a moment, this, like any other moment.

"That's very good of you," he said, in that veiled voice which sounds just like ordinary talking to anyone a couple of yards away until he tries to hear what you're saying, and finds that he can't. "And there is a secret door. But first I want to ask whether I may go on using this room. I am writing a book—about my new discovery."

"Oh," said Jane, and her voice was not quite so veiled as his—but still, she wasn't exactly shouting, "have you made a new discovery? What is it?"

"Well," he said, "if it's what I think it is—and I don't think I'm wrong—it knocks spots off Newton. And as for Einstein But that's all dull to you . . ."

"You mean I couldn't understand it?"

"You could, of course, but you'd have to understand a lot of other dull things first—mathematics, and physics, and dynamics, and things like that."

"Can't you explain in a popular style that the beaver could well understand?"

"I suppose I could. But it would take a long time and it wouldn't amuse you. Only may I come and write here?