Part 32 (2/2)
”It's what I say--that you've always hated me.”
”I'll make it up to you!” he laughed.
She leaned on the doorway with her forehead against the lintel. ”You don't even deny it.”
”Contradict you _now_? I'll admit it, though it's rubbish, on purpose to live it down.”
”It doesn't matter,” she said slowly; ”for however much you might have liked me you'd never have done so half as much as I've cared for you.”
”Oh I'm so poor!” Nick murmured cheerfully.
With her eyes looking at him as in a new light she slowly shook her head. Then she declared: ”You never can live it down.”
”I like that! Haven't I asked you to marry me? When did you ever ask me?”
”Every day of my life! As I say, it's hard--for a proud woman.”
”Yes, you're too proud even to answer me.”
”We must think of it, we must talk of it.”
”Think of it? I've thought of it ever so much.”
”I mean together. There are many things in such a question.”
”The princ.i.p.al thing is beautifully to give me your word.”
She looked at him afresh all strangely; then she threw off: ”I wish I didn't adore you!” She went straight down the steps.
”You don't adore me at all, you know, if you leave me now. Why do you go? It's so charming here and we're so delightfully alone.”
”Untie the boat; we'll go on the water,” Julia said.
Nick was at the top of the steps, looking down at her. ”Ah stay a little--_do_ stay!” he pleaded.
”I'll get in myself, I'll pull off,” she simply answered.
At this he came down and bent a little to undo the rope. He was close to her and as he raised his head he felt it caught; she had seized it in her hands and she pressed her lips, as he had never felt lips pressed, to the first place they encountered. The next instant she was in the boat.
This time he dipped the oars very slowly indeed; and, while for a period that was longer than it seemed to them they floated vaguely, they mainly sat and glowed at each other as if everything had been settled. There were reasons enough why Nick should be happy; but it is a singular fact that the leading one was the sense of his having escaped a great and ugly mistake. The final result of his mother's appeal to him the day before had been the idea that he must act with unimpeachable honour. He was capable of taking it as an a.s.surance that Julia had placed him under an obligation a gentleman could regard but in one way. If she herself had understood it so, putting the vision, or at any rate the appreciation, of a closer tie into everything she had done for him, the case was conspicuously simple and his course unmistakably plain. That is why he had been gay when he came out of the house to look for her: he could be gay when his course was plain. He could be all the gayer, naturally, I must add, that, in turning things over as he had done half the night, what he had turned up oftenest was the recognition that Julia now had a new personal power with him. It was not for nothing that she had thrown herself personally into his life. She had by her act made him live twice as intensely, and such an office, such a service, if a man had accepted and deeply tasted it, was certainly a thing to put him on his honour. He took it as distinct that there was nothing he could do in preference that wouldn't be spoiled for him by any deflexion from that point. His mother had made him uncomfortable by bringing it so heavily up that Julia was in love with him--he didn't like in general to be told such things; but the responsibility seemed easier to carry and he was less shy about it when once he was away from other eyes, with only Julia's own to express that truth and with indifferent nature all about. Besides, what discovery had he made this morning but that he also was in love?
”You've got to be a very great man, you know,” she said to him in the middle of the lake. ”I don't know what you mean about my salon, but I _am_ ambitious.”
”We must look at life in a large, bold way,” he concurred while he rested his oars.
”That's what I mean. If I didn't think you could I wouldn't look at you.”
”I could what?”
<script>