"I have suggested
this, because it seems to me I ought to do something for you--in
return," she said. "It's nothing, simply sitting there with me. And we
haven't got anything else. This is our only hospitality. And the day
seems so splendid."
The modesty, the sweetness, of this little explanation, with a kind of
intimated desire, constituting almost an appeal, for rightness, which
seemed to pervade it, left a fragrance in the air after she had
vanished. Ransom walked up and down the room, with his hands in his
pockets, under the influence of it, without taking up even once the book
about Mrs. Foat. He occupied the time in asking himself by what
perversity of fate or of inclination such a charming creature was
ranting upon platforms and living in Olive Chancellor's pocket, or how a
ranter and sycophant could possibly be so engaging. And she was so
disturbingly beautiful, too. This last fact was not less evident when
she came down arranged for their walk. They left the house, and as they
proceeded he remembered that he had asked himself earlier how he could
do honour to such a combination of leisure and ethereal mildness as he
had waked up to that morning--a mildness that seemed the very breath of
his own latitude. This question was answered now; to do exactly what he
was doing at that moment was an observance sufficiently festive.
XXV
They passed through two or three small, short streets, which, with their
little wooden houses, with still more wooden door-yards, looked as if
they had been constructed by the nearest carpenter and his boy--a
sightless, soundless, interspaced, embryonic region--and entered a long
avenue which, fringed on either side with fresh villas, offering
themselves trustfully to the public, had the distinction of a wide
pavement of neat red brick.
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