It did so now with Lucy. When she opened her eyes and saw Everard, she
smiled at him a smile of perfect confidence. She had forgotten
everything. She woke up after a deep sleep and saw him, her dear love,
sitting beside her. How natural to be happy. Then, the expression on his
face bringing back remembrance, it seemed to her in that first serene
sanity, that clear-visioned moment of spirit unfretted by body, that
they had been extraordinarily silly, taking everything the other one
said and did with a tragicness....
Only love filled Lucy after the deep, restoring sleep. 'Dearest one,'
she murmured drowsily, smiling at him, without changing her position.
He said nothing to that; and presently, having woken up more, she got on
to her knees and pulled herself across to him and curled up at his feet,
her head against his knee.
He still said nothing. He waited. He would give her time. Her words had
been familiar, but not penitent. They had hardly been the right
beginning for an expression of contrition; but he would see what she
said next.
What she said next was, 'Haven't we been silly,'--and, more familiarity,
she put one arm round his knees and held them close against her face.
'We?' said Wemyss. 'Did you say we?'
'Yes,' said Lucy, her cheek against his knee. 'We've been wasting time.'
Wemyss paused before he made his comment on this. 'Really,' he then
said, 'the way you include me shows very little appreciation of your
conduct.'
'Well, _I've_ been silly then,' she said, lifting her head and smiling
up at him.
She simply couldn't go on with indignations. Perhaps they were just
ones. It didn't matter if they were. Who wanted to be in the right in a
dispute with one's lover? Everybody, oh, but everybody who loved, would
passionately want always to have been in the wrong, never, never to have
been right. That one's beloved should have been unkind,--who wanted that
to be true? Who wouldn't do anything sooner than have not been mistaken
about it? Vividly she saw Everard as he was before their marriage; so
dear, so boyish, such fun, her playmate. She could say anything to him
then. She had been quite fearless. And vividly, too, she saw him as he
was when first they met, both crushed by death,--how he had comforted
her, how he had been everything that was wonderful and tender. All that
had happened since, all that had happened on this particular and most
unfortunate day, was only a sort of excess of boyishness: boyishness on
its uncontrolled side, a wave, a fit of bad temper provoked by her not
having held on to her impulses. That locking her out in the rain,--a
schoolboy might have done that to another schoolboy. It meant nothing,
except that he was angry. That about sexual allure----oh, well.
'I've been very silly,' she said earnestly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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