When they had discussed the scene he continued, 'It always seems to me that this place reflects the average mood of human life. I mean, if we strike the balance between our best moods and our worst we shall find our average condition to stand at about the same pitch in emotional colour as these sandy dunes and this grey scene do in landscape.'
Paula contended that he ought not to measure everybody by himself.
'I have no other standard,' said De Stancy; 'and if my own is wrong, it is you who have made it so. Have you thought any more of what I said at Cologne?'
'I don't quite remember what you did say at Cologne?'
'My dearest life!' Paula's eyes rounding somewhat, he corrected the exclamation. 'My dear Miss Power, I will, without reserve, tell it to you all over again.'
'Pray spare yourself the effort,' she said drily. 'What has that one fatal step betrayed me into!... Do you seriously mean to say that I am the cause of your life being coloured like this scene of grass and sand? If so, I have committed a very great fault!'
'It can be nullified by a word.'
'Such a word!'
'It is a very short one.'
'There's a still shorter one more to the purpose. Frankly, I believe you suspect me to have some latent and unowned inclination for you--that you think speaking is the only point upon which I am backward.... There now, it is raining; what shall we do? I thought this wind meant rain.'
'Do? Stand on here, as we are standing now.'
'Your sister and my aunt are gone under the wall. I think we will walk towards them.'
'You had made me hope,' he continued (his thoughts apparently far away from the rain and the wind and the possibility of shelter), 'that you might change your mind, and give to your original promise a liberal meaning in renewing it. In brief I mean this, that you would allow it to merge into an engagement. Don't think it presumptuous,' he went on, as he held the umbrella over her; 'I am sure any man would speak as I do. A distinct permission to be with you on probation--that was what you gave me at Carlsruhe: and flinging casuistry on one side, what does that mean?'
'That I am artistically interested in your family history.' And she went out from the umbrella to the shelter of the hotel where she found her aunt and friend.