Page:The Voyage Out.djvu/216

214 herself, which was what he wanted, for so they might come to know each other.

She looked back meditatively upon her past life.

"How do you spend your day?" he asked.

She meditated still. When she thought of their day it seemed to her that it was cut into four pieces by their meals. These divisions were absolutely rigid, the contents of the day having to accommodate themselves within the four rigid bars. Looking back at her life, that was what she saw.

"Breakfast nine; luncheon one; tea five; dinner eight," she said.

"Well," said Hewet, "what d'you do in the morning?"

"I used to play the piano for hours and hours."

"And after luncheon?"

She summoned before her a typical day's life, and in describing it became much interested in her narrative; not only did the actual incidents of her life present themselves vividly before her, but in describing them to Hewet she was, unconsciously, reviewing her past under the influence of his eyes. At length she broke off.

"But this isn't very interesting for you."

"Good Lord!" Hewet exclaimed, "I've never been so much interested in my life." She then realised that while she had been thinking of Richmond, his eyes had never left her face. The knowledge of this excited her.

"Go on, please go on," he urged. "Let's imagine it's a Wednesday. You're all at luncheon. You sit there, and Aunt Lucy there, and Aunt Clara here;" he arranged three pebbles on the grass between them.

"Aunt Clara carves the neck of lamb," Rachel went on, fixing her eyes upon the pebbles and smiling as she conceived in those stones some resemblance to her aunts. What did they talk about? She recalled a story about a Mrs. Hunt whose son had been hugged to death by a bear. Her aunts saw nothing to laugh at, she remembered, in that catastrophe, and now she looked at Hewet to see whether he shared her own disposition to think that form of death for the son of Mrs. Hunt amusing. She was reassured. But she thought it necessary to apologise again; she had been talking too much.