第31章

She may have been conscious that there was some exaggeration in this fancy of hers, for she certainly did not wish to share it with Ralph.

To him, she supposed, Mary Datchet, composing leaflets for Cabinet Ministers among her typewriters, represented all that was interesting and genuine; and, accordingly, she shut them both out from all share in the crowded street, with its pendant necklace of lamps, its lighted windows, and its throng of men and women, which exhilarated her to such an extent that she very nearly forgot her companion. She walked very fast, and the effect of people passing in the opposite direction was to produce a queer dizziness both in her head and in Ralph's, which set their bodies far apart. But she did her duty by her companion almost unconsciously.

"Mary Datchet does that sort of work very well. . . . She's responsible for it, I suppose?""Yes. The others don't help at all. . . . Has she made a convert of you?""Oh no. That is, I'm a convert already."

"But she hasn't persuaded you to work for them?""Oh dear no--that wouldn't do at all."

So they walked on down the Tottenham Court Road, parting and coming together again, and Ralph felt much as though he were addressing the summit of a poplar in a high gale of wind.

"Suppose we get on to that omnibus?" he suggested.

Katharine acquiesced, and they climbed up, and found themselves alone on top of it.

"But which way are you going?" Katharine asked, waking a little from the trance into which movement among moving things had thrown her.

"I'm going to the Temple," Ralph replied, inventing a destination on the spur of the moment. He felt the change come over her as they sat down and the omnibus began to move forward. He imagined her contemplating the avenue in front of them with those honest sad eyes which seemed to set him at such a distance from them. But the breeze was blowing in their faces; it lifted her hat for a second, and she drew out a pin and stuck it in again,--a little action which seemed, for some reason, to make her rather more fallible. Ah, if only her hat would blow off, and leave her altogether disheveled, accepting it from his hands!

"This is like Venice," she observed, raising her hand. "The motor-cars, I mean, shooting about so quickly, with their lights.""I've never seen Venice," he replied. "I keep that and some other things for my old age.""What are the other things?" she asked.

"There's Venice and India and, I think, Dante, too."She laughed.

"Think of providing for one's old age! And would you refuse to see Venice if you had the chance?"Instead of answering her, he wondered whether he should tell her something that was quite true about himself; and as he wondered, he told her.

"I've planned out my life in sections ever since I was a child, to make it last longer. You see, I'm always afraid that I'm missing something--""And so am I!" Katharine exclaimed. "But, after all," she added, "why should you miss anything?""Why? Because I'm poor, for one thing," Ralph rejoined. "You, Isuppose, can have Venice and India and Dante every day of your life."She said nothing for a moment, but rested one hand, which was bare of glove, upon the rail in front of her, meditating upon a variety of things, of which one was that this strange young man pronounced Dante as she was used to hearing it pronounced, and another, that he had, most unexpectedly, a feeling about life that was familiar to her.

Perhaps, then, he was the sort of person she might take an interest in, if she came to know him better, and as she had placed him among those whom she would never want to know better, this was enough to make her silent. She hastily recalled her first view of him, in the little room where the relics were kept, and ran a bar through half her impressions, as one cancels a badly written sentence, having found the right one.

"But to know that one might have things doesn't alter the fact that one hasn't got them," she said, in some confusion. "How could I go to India, for example? Besides," she began impulsively, and stopped herself. Here the conductor came round, and interrupted them. Ralph waited for her to resume her sentence, but she said no more.

"I have a message to give your father," he remarked. "Perhaps you would give it him, or I could come--""Yes, do come," Katharine replied.

"Still, I don't see why you shouldn't go to India," Ralph began, in order to keep her from rising, as she threatened to do.

But she got up in spite of him, and said good-bye with her usual air of decision, and left him with a quickness which Ralph connected now with all her movements. He looked down and saw her standing on the pavement edge, an alert, commanding figure, which waited its season to cross, and then walked boldly and swiftly to the other side. That gesture and action would be added to the picture he had of her, but at present the real woman completely routed the phantom one.