“Her voice was as the voice of his own soul Heard in the calm of thought. . . .”
That was the nearest he could get to it; but the words, although they expressed a little of his absorption, did not convey the musical qualities that he wanted to describe. He tried to compare it with the tones of some instrument that he knew, but neither wood-wind nor strings suggested what he wanted. No . . . it was a sound nearer to nature than any man-made instrument. It was the voice of a Naiad: the sound of running water in a clear brookland. And all the time that he listened to her he was thrillingly conscious of her physical presence. She was sitting on the stair beneath him, and fortunately she could not see that he was gazing at her in the gloom, thinking how beautifully shaped was the nape of the neck from which her dark hair was drawn upwards; overcome by the loveliness and smoothness of her curved shoulder.
“I’m talking all the time,” he said, “and you’re saying nothing. It’s rather a shame . . . because you speak so beautifully.”
“Whatever do you mean?” For a moment her eyes were on his. He dared not look at them. He could not answer her, for the moment seemed full of such an overpowering sweetness.
“Oh, I only mean that when you say a thing like that, it . . . it suggests that everything about you is marvellously clean and clear and musical—” He paused, for he felt that she might laugh at him.
“Like water in a hill country. It makes me feel as if I weren’t within a hundred miles of North Bromwich.”
“No, I’m not a bit like that. I’m really awfully hard and worldly—I wish I were the least bit what you imagine. You’re most awfully young, aren’t you?”
Perhaps she did not mean the word cruelly, but it seemed very cruel to Edwin. It was quite possible that she was a few years older than himself, if age were to be counted by years; but in reality he knew that she was beautifully young, certainly young enough to love and to be loved.
He wanted to talk about nothing else. His head was full of words that he wanted to throw before her like jewels, but he did not know how much he dared to say. He knew it was impossible for him to express a hundredth part of his delight in her. It would be nearly as bad as kissing her neck in the manner of Griffin, to say that the curve of it sent him delirious with joy. It would be indecency rather than candour to say that the faint scent of her intoxicated him. He was silent with tremulous emotion. He wondered if she could be conscious of it; and he could not guess, for she, too, did not speak. From the ballroom they heard the music of another dance begin. Two shadowy couples emerged from the passage beneath them. A curtain of Indian beading made a sound like dead leaves driven over a dry pavement by the wind. The intruders’ voices died away.