"Go and fetch it for me," said Rosamund, with crisp and sharp authority.
The lounging Mr. Moon stood for one split second astonished; then he shot away across the lawn, as if shod with the feathered shoes out of the Greek fairy tale. He cleared three yards and fifteen daisies at a leap, out of mere bodily levity; but when he came within a yard or two of the open parlour windows, his flying feet fell in their old manner like lead; he twisted round and came back slowly, whistling. The events of that enchanted evening were not at an end.
Inside the dark sitting-room of which Moon had caught a glimpse a curious thing had happened, almost an instant after the intemperate exit of Rosamund. It was something which, occurring in that obscure parlour, seemed to Arthur Inglewood like heaven and earth turning head over heels, the sea being the ceiling and the stars the floor. No words can express how it astonished him, as it astonishes all ****** men when it happens.
Yet the stiffest female stoicism seems separated from it only by a sheet of paper or a sheet of steel. It indicates no surrender, far less any sympathy.
The most rigid and ruthless woman can begin to cry, just as the most effeminate man can grow a beard. It is a separate sexual power, and proves nothing one way or the other about force of character.
But to young men ignorant of women, like Arthur Inglewood, to see Diana Duke crying was like seeing a motor-car shedding tears of petrol.
He could never have given (even if his really manly modesty had permitted it) any vaguest vision of what he did when he saw that portent. He acted as men do when a theatre catches fire--very differently from how they would have conceived themselves as acting, whether for better or worse.
He had a faint memory of certain half-stifled explanations, that the heiress was the one really paying guest, and she would go, and the bailiffs (in consequence) would come; but after that he knew nothing of his own conduct except by the protests it evoked.
"Leave me alone, Mr. Inglewood--leave me alone; that's not the way to help."
"But I can help you," said Arthur, with grinding certainty;
"I can, I can, I can..."
"Why, you said," cried the girl, "that you were much weaker than me."
"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 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."
"Balmy is the word we use in Fleet Street," said Mr. Moon. "Balmy--especially on the crumpet."
And he fanned himself quite unnecessarily with his straw hat.
They were all full of little leaps and pulsations of objectless and airy energy. Diana stirred and stretched her long arms rigidly, as if crucified, in a sort of excruciating restfulness;
Michael stood still for long intervals, with gathered muscles, then spun round like a teetotum, and stood still again;
Rosamund did not trip, for women never trip, except when they fall on their noses, but she struck the ground with her foot as she moved, as if to some inaudible dance tune; and Inglewood, leaning quite quietly against a tree, had unconsciously clutched a branch and shaken it with a creative violence.
Those giant gestures of Man, that made the high statues and the strokes of war, tossed and tormented all their limbs.
Silently as they strolled and stood they were bursting like batteries with an animal magnetism.
"And now," cried Moon quite suddenly, stretching out a hand on each side, "let's dance round that bush!"
"Why, what bush do you mean?" asked Rosamund, looking round with a sort of radiant rudeness.
"The bush that isn't there," said Michael--"the Mulberry Bush."
