“So I am weaker than you,” said Arthur, in a voice that went vibrating
through everything, “but not just now.”
“Let go my hands!” cried Diana. “I won’t be bullied.”
In one element he was much stronger than she—the matter of humour. This
leapt up in him suddenly, and he laughed, saying: “Well, you are mean.
You know quite well you’ll bully me all the rest of my life. You might
allow a man the one minute of his life when he’s allowed to bully.”
It was as extraordinary for him to laugh as for her to cry, and for the
first time since her childhood Diana was entirely off her guard.
“Do you mean you want to marry me?” she said.
“Why, there’s a cab at the door!” cried Inglewood, springing up with an
unconscious energy and bursting open the glass doors that led into the
garden.
As he led her out by the hand they realized somehow for the first time
that the house and garden were on a steep height over London. And yet,
though they felt the place to be uplifted, they felt it also to be
secret: it was like some round walled garden on the top of one of the
turrets of heaven.
Inglewood looked around dreamily, his brown eyes devouring all sorts of
details with a senseless delight. He noticed for the first time that
the railings of the gate beyond the garden bushes were moulded like
little spearheads and painted blue. He noticed that one of the blue
spears was loosened in its place, and hung sideways; and this almost
made him laugh. He thought it somehow exquisitely harmless and funny
that the railing should be crooked; he thought he should like to know
how it happened, who did it, and how the man was getting on.
When they were gone a few feet across that fiery grass they realized
that they were not alone. Rosamund Hunt and the eccentric Mr. Moon,
both of whom they had last seen in the blackest temper of detachment,
were standing together on the lawn. They were standing in quite an
ordinary manner, and yet they looked somehow like people in a book.
“Oh,” said Diana, “what lovely air!”
“I know,” called out Rosamund, with a pleasure so positive that it rang
out like a complaint. “It’s just like that horrid, beastly fizzy stuff
they gave me that made me feel happy.”
“Oh, it isn’t like anything but itself!” answered Diana, breathing
deeply. “Why, it’s all cold, and yet it feels like fire.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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