"He backs himself to crawl--until he crawls triumphantly right over you....I don't like to think of the dream he has....I take it he will lose.Is it fair to go into this game with him?""In the interests of Lake," she said, smiling softly at Sir Richmond in the moonlight."But you are perfectly right.""And suppose he doesn't lose!"
Sir Richmond found himself uttering sentiments.
"There is only one decent way in which a civilized man and a civilized woman may approach one another.Passionate desire is not enough.What is called love is not enough.Pledges, rational considerations, all these things are worthless.All these things are compatible with hate.The primary essential is friendship, clear understanding, absolute confidence.Then within that condition, in that elect relationship, love is permissible, mating, marriage or no marriage, as you will--all things are permissible...."
Came a long pause between them.
"Dear old cathedral," said Miss Grammont, a little irrelevantly.She had an air of having concluded something that to Sir Richmond seemed scarcely to have begun.She stood looking at the great dark facade edged with moonlight for some moments, and then turned towards the hotel, which showed a pink-lit window.
"I wonder," she said, "if Belinda is still up, And what she will think when I tell her of the final extinction of Mr.
Lake.I think she rather looked forward to being the intimate friend, secrets and everything, of Mrs.Gunter Lake."Section 10
Sir Richmond woke up at dawn and he woke out of an extraordinary dream.He was saying to Miss Grammont:
"There is no other marriage than the marriage of true minds.
There is no other marriage than the marriage of true minds."He saw her as he had seen her the evening before, light and cool, coming towards him in the moonlight from the hotel.But also in the inconsistent way of dreams he was very close to her kind, faintly smiling face, and his eyes were wet with tears and he was kissing her hand."My dear wife and mate,"he was saying, and suddenly he was kissing her cool lips.
He woke up and stared at his dream, which faded out only very slowly before the fresh sun rise upon the red tiles and tree boughs outside the open window, and before the first stir and clamour of the birds.
He felt like a court in which some overwhelmingly revolutionary piece of evidence had been tendered.All the elaborate defence had broken down at one blow.He sat up on the edge of his bed, facing the new fact.
"This is monstrous and ridiculous," he said, "and Martineau judged me exactly.I am in love with her....I am head over heels in love with her.I have never been so much in love or so truly in love with anyone before."Section 11
