“Chastity, by nature the gentlest of all affections--give it but its head--’tis like a ramping and roaring lion.” Saving herself! Yes, she would save herself for marriage.
He even began to contemplate that outcome.
Her delayed letter, when it came, announced that she was coming home at once; he was to meet her train in the morning after the morrow.
It was a dull autumnal morning when he met her. Her appearance was not less charming than he had imagined it, though the charm was almost inarticulate and there were one or two crude touches that momentarily distressed him. But he met with a flush of emotion all her glances of gaiety and love that were somehow, vaguely, different--perhaps there was a shade less reserve. They went to lunch in the city and at the end of the meal he asked her:
“I--well, no--perhaps--tell me, Kate, yourself.”
“You are different now, you look different, David.”
“You too, are changed. I can’t tell how it is, or where, but you are.”
“O, I am changed, much changed,” murmured Kate.
“I have come back,” said Kate, “to be happier. But somehow you are different.”
“You are different, too. Shall we ever be happy again?”
“Come on!” he cried hilariously, “let us make a day of it, come along!”
Out in the streets they wandered until rain began to fall.
“Come in here for a while.” They were passing a roomy dull building, the museum, and they went in together. It was a vast hollow-sounding flagstone place that had a central brightness fading into dim recesses and galleries of gloom. They examined a monster skeleton of something like an elephant, three stuffed apes, and a picture of the dodo. Kate stood before them without interest or amusement, she just contemplated them. What did she want with an elephant, an ape, or a dodo? The glass exhibit cases were leaned upon by them, the pieces of coal neatly arranged and labelled were stared at besides the pieces of granite or coloured rock with long names ending in _orite dorite_ and _sorite_ and so on to the precious gems including an imitation, as big as a bun, of a noted diamond. They leaned over them, repeating the names on the labels with the quintessence of vacuity. They hated it. There were beetles and worms of horror, butterflies of beauty, and birds that had been stuffed so long that they seemed to be intoxicated; their beaks fitted them as loosely as a drunkard’s hat, their glassy eyes were pathetically vague. After ascending a flight of stone steps David and Kate stooped for a long time over a case of sea-anemones that had been reproduced in gelatine by a German with a fancy for such things. From the railed balcony they could peer down into the well of the fusty-smelling museum. No one else was visiting it, they were alone with all things dead, things that had died millions of years ago and were yet simulating life. A footfall sounded so harsh in the corridors, boomed with such clangour, that they took slow diffident steps, almost tiptoeing, while Kate scarcely spoke at all and he conversed in murmurs. Whenever he coughed the whole place seemed to shudder. In the recess, hidden from prying eyes, David clasped her willing body in his arms. For once she was unshrinking and returned his fervour. The vastness, the emptiness, the deadness, worked upon their feelings with intense magic.