England -- Fiction; Honeymoons -- Fiction; Love stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction
"The ciphers were wonderful," she said. "I had no idea such things were
possible. I understood quite a lot," she added, a little defiantly.
"But it's rather hateful to think of his being chained to a desk doing
work that isn't _his_ work."
"That, or something like it, is the lot of most people," he said, "but
it needn't be his lot. It's for you to say. I can very well afford a
small endowment for research, if you say so."
"But why must _I_ decide?"
"Because," he said, slowly, "I felt when I was talking to you to-day
that you hated everything I said; you wanted to go on believing in all
the Shakespeare legends."
"I think I said so. I'm not sure that I meant it. Anyhow, if it rests
with me I say give him his research endowment, if he'll take it."
"He'll take it. I'll get a man I know at Balliol to write, offering it.
In his beautiful transatlantic simplicity the dear chap will think the
college is offering the money. He'll take it like a lamb. But won't you
tell me--why was it that you hated me to be interested in this business
and you are glad that this Vandervelde should be helped to go on with
it?"
"I should like him to be happy," she said, "and there's nothing else in
life for him--he has given up everything else for it. I want him, at
least, to have the treasure he's paid everything for--the joy of his
work. But that sort of joy should be reserved for the people who can
have nothing else. But for you--well, somehow, I feel that people who
take up a thing like this ought to be prepared to sacrifice everything
else in life to it, as he has done. And I could not bear that you should
do it. Life has so much besides for you."
"Yes," he said, "life holds very much for me."
"And for me, too," she said, and with that gave him her hand for good
night.
He was certain afterward that it had not been his doing, and yet it must
have been, for her hand had not moved in his. And yet he had found it
laid not against his lips, but against his cheek, and he had held it
there in silence for more than a moment before she drew it away and said
good night.
At the door she turned and looked back over her shoulder. "Good night,"
she said again. "Good night, Edward."
And that was the first time she called him by his name.
XV
KENILWORTH
THERE are some very pleasant shops in Warwick, and if you have time and
no money you can spend some very agreeable mornings wandering from one
shop to another, asking the prices of things you have all the will but
none of the means to buy. If you have money and time you will buy a few
of the things whose prices you have asked. Edward bought a ring, crystal
with brilliants around it, very lovely and very expensive, and some
topazes set in old silver, quite as beautiful but not so dear.
Then they went to the old-furniture shops, where he excited the vexed
admiration of the dealers by his unerring eye for fakes. He bought an
oak chest, carved with a shield of arms, the date 1612, and the initials
"I. B."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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