And the old lady pottered off gleefully.
`If she knew!' said Clara quietly to him.
`Well, she doesn't know; and it shows we're nice in ourselves, at any rate. You look quite enough to satisfy an archangel, and I'm sure I feel harmless--so--if it makes you look nice, and makes folk happy when they have us, and makes us happy--why, we're not cheating them out of much!'
They went on with the meal. When they were going away, the old lady came timidly with three tiny dahlias in full blow, neat as bees, and speckled scarlet and white. She stood before Clara, pleased with herself, saying:
`I don't know whether--' and holding the flowers forward in her old hand.
`Oh, how pretty!' cried Clara, accepting the flowers.
`Shall she have them all?' asked Paul reproachfully of the old woman.
`Yes, she shall have them all,' she replied, beaming with joy. `You have got enough for your share.'
`Ah, but I shall ask her to give me one!' he teased.
`Then she does as she pleases,' said the old lady, smiling. And she bobbed a little curtsey of delight.
Clara was rather quiet and uncomfortable. As they walked along, he said:
`You don't feel criminal, do you?'
She looked at him with startled grey eyes.
`Criminal!' she said. `No.'
`But you seem to feel you have done a wrong?'
`No,' she said. `I only think, "If they knew!"'
`If they knew, they'd cease to understand. As it is, they do understand, and they like it. What do they matter? Here, with only the trees and me, you don't feel not the least bit wrong, do you?'
He took her by the arm, held her facing him, holding her eyes with his. Something fretted him.
`Not sinners, are we?' he said, with an uneasy little frown.
`No,' she replied.
He kissed her, laughing.
`You like your little bit of guiltiness, I believe,' he said. `I believe Eve enjoyed it, when she went cowering out of Paradise.'
But there was a certain glow and quietness about her that made him glad. When he was alone in the railway-carriage, he found himself tumultuously happy, and the people exceedingly nice, and the night lovely, and everything good.
Mrs Morel was sitting reading when he got home. Her health was not good now, and there had come that ivory pallor into her face which he never noticed, and which afterwards he never forgot. She did not mention her own ill-health to him. After all, she thought, it was not much.