Chalfont answered her with a question of his own.
"To me? A burning, fiery furnace. All great waves beating on me and smashing me about."
"I don't know. If it is it's like that stuff everybody's talking about--radium. It gives off heat and loses none." She remained lost in thought for a while. "Perhaps I should feel different if I were--married.... I dream of it sometimes."
She was dreaming then. Chalfont saw it in her eyes. Her artlessness seemed a wonderful thing to him.
"The odd thing is," she went on, "when I'm imagining that I forget all about the man. It's like having a sort of marriage service all to yourself."
"Oh, it's silly.... I think of it to make me go to sleep instead of counting silly sheep. It makes me float off as if I were on a lovely cloud. First I hear the church bells ringing--quite loud, pealing; and my heart goes thumpetty-thump because I'm going to be married, which I shall never be in my life. It seems so important and grand. And then I dress. That doesn't interest me very much; but I like the look of my face through the white veil. It's misty, like a summer morning.... Then I'm in church--a great church, perhaps a cathedral, and as I go up the aisle it's as if God is playing the organ, and I'm walking on all His stars."
There was quite a wonderful look in her beautiful face. She seemed to have forgotten Chalfont. He kept quite still waiting for her to go on.
"And then the service begins. I read it once. Parts of it I shall never forget. In the church there are stacks of white flowers and lilies. It's all so quiet and awful--only the clergyman's voice.... I feel choking and I can't see because my eyes are full of tears.... There _must_ be sacred love. I feel it all through me.... And when it's over I'm crying. Sometimes if I'm not asleep I go on with the honeymoon. I see fields and blue sky and a homey-looking house--soft red brick--with a green lawn and cedar trees on it. Their branches stretch out to me like loving arms. I see flowers everywhere. I think it's a sort of farm, because there are cows and wondering-eyed calves with soft slobbery noses and curly, wet, rough tongues; and lambs with baby faces to make pets of; and clucking chickens and stupid broody hens. I'd be so kind to them...." She drew a long breath. The dream was broken. "Fred would say I'm dotty," she finished apologetically.