which was symbolized thus. And since to be the self which he had known and fallen in love with was most likely to satisfy him still, with all the intimacy added which that which had happened demanded, she was herself again.
"There! there!" she said. "Oh, we mustn't be 'Arry and 'Arriet at Margate! I must sit down, I think; I am yes, what 'Arriet would call 'all of a tremble.' Do you think being happy makes you tremble, as being frightened does? Oh, Edgar, it was the empty beach to which I brought you."
"Never empty," he said. "You were there."
"The full beach then. Oh, it is full! You see, I never saw you here before. Look at the little bathing-tent! Was it lonely, do you think, before you came? Was it waiting? Was the sea waiting, and the sands? Oh, did God make this big shining place just for this?"
It was quite easy to her, now that the savageness had gone from him, to say things like these. She was not consciously deceiving him; she was engaged to him, and merely said what her brain told her was natural to say. Ignorant though she was of love, she guessed its language very well. He listened like one entranced; and he had never looked so handsome.
"Yes, that was so," he said. "Oh, Lucia, tell me more of the world and of you."
She let her eyes dwell on him for a moment, then sighed and looked largely round. And she spoke, smiling.
"But we have to see the world with our own eyes, when all is said. Things are as they are to us: our consciousness of them is the final appeal. Whether you ask me of the world or of me, it is your estimate of them you want to have told you."
He laid his hand on her knee.
"No, not so at all," he said. "It is your eyes I must see with. You know, I began to see with your eyes the very first day, when I had tea with you alone at your house. You made me see my aims with your eyes, and now I must see everything with your eyes."
This, again, was quite in her grasp; the conversation had become a philosophical discussion, intimate, it is true, but comprehensible again to her. She felt she might even introduce a humorous touch into it—a thing that a few minutes ago would have been dreadfully incongruous.
"Ah, I understand," she said mischievously; "I must tell you about yourself, is it not so, because you are me? And I must tell you about the world as I see it, because that is how you really
