It would make me want to, said Paul Overt, feeling strongly, on the instant, the suggestion of what she said and that of the emotion with which she said it, and well aware of what an incentive, on St. Georges lips, such a speech might be.
Oh youas if you hadnt! I should like so to hear you talk together, she added ardently.
Thats very genial of you; but hed have it all his own way. Im prostrate before him.
She had an air of earnestness. Do you think then hes so perfect?
Far from it. Some of his later books seem to me of a queerness!
Yes, yeshe knows that.
Paul Overt stared. That they seem to me of a queerness!
Well yes, or at any rate that theyre not what they should be. He told me he didnt esteem them. He has told me such wonderful thingshes so interesting.
There was a certain shock for Paul Overt in the knowledge that the fine genius they were talking of had been reduced to so explicit a confession and had made it, in his misery, to the first comer; for though Miss Fancourt was charming what was she after all but an immature girl encountered at a country-house? Yet precisely this was part of the sentiment he himself had just expressed: he would make way completely for the poor peccable great man not because he didnt read him clear, but altogether because he did. His consideration was half composed of tenderness for superficialities which he was sure their perpetrator judged privately, judged more ferociously than any one, and which represented some tragic intellectual secret. He would have his reasons for his psychology à fleur de peau, and these reasons could only be cruel ones, such as would make him dearer to those who already were fond of him. You excite my envy. I have my reserves, I discriminatebut I love him, Paul said in a moment. And seeing him for the first time this way is a great event for me.
How momentoushow magnificent! cried the girl. How delicious to bring you together!
Your doing itthat makes it perfect, our friend returned.
Hes as eager as you, she went on. But its so odd you shouldnt have met.
Its not really so odd as it strikes you. Ive been out of England so muchmade repeated absences all these last years.
She took this in with interest. And yet you write of it as well as if you were always here.
Its just the being away perhaps. At any rate the best bits, I suspect, are those that were done in dreary places abroad.
And why were they dreary?
Because they were health-resortswhere my poor mother was dying.
Your poor mother?she was all sweet wonder.
We went from place to place to help her to get better. But she never did. To the deadly Riviera (I hate it!) to the high Alps, to Algiers, and far awaya hideous journeyto Colorado.