“Oh, are you here again, Mr. Walter? Why have you come again? You know I don’t want you here.”
“Why shouldn’t you want me? I want to come; it’s my pleasure.”
The voice of the young man had a deeper tone, a manlier bass than its usual youthful lightness coming through the dark, and the great space and freedom of the night.
“It’s a strange pleasure,” said the other voice. “I should not think it any pleasure were I in your place. If even there was a moon! for people that are fond of the beauties of nature that is always something. But now it is so dark”--there seemed a sort of shiver in the voice. “The dark is a thing I can’t abide, as they say here.”
“For my part, I like it best. Come this way, where the view is, and you would think you could see it--that is, you can feel it, which is almost more. Don’t you know what I mean? The wind blows from far away; it comes from miles of space, right out of the sky. You could feel even that the landscape was below you from the feel of the air.”
“That is all very pretty,” she said, and this time there was the indication of a yawn in her tone, “but if it is only for the sake of the landscape, one can see that when it’s day, and feeling it is a superfluity in the dark. If that was all you came for--”
“I did not come for that at all, as you know. I came for--it would be just the same to me if there was no landscape at all, if it was a street corner--”
“Under a lamp-post! Oh, that is my ideal!” with a little clap of her hands. “What I would give to see a lamp again, a bright, clear, big light, like Oxford Street or the Circus! You think that is very vulgar, I know.”
“Nothing is vulgar if you like it. I should like lamp-posts too if they had associations. I saw plenty of them to-day, and I wished I could have had you there to take you for a walk past the shop windows, since you are so fond of them.”
“Oh, the shop windows! Don’t talk to a poor exile of her native country that she is pining for! So you were in town; and what did you see there?”
“Nothing!--in London! You must be the very dullest, or the most obstinate, or prejudiced--Nothing! why, everything is there!”
“You were not there; that makes all the difference. I kept thinking all the time where I should have found you had you been in London. You never will tell me where you live, or how can I see you when you go back.”