“Me!”

“Yes.  I like talking to you and I don’t like talking to you.  And I see now it is because you keep on talking of my Personality and your Personality.  That makes me uncomfortable.  It’s like having some one following me about with a limelight.  And in a sort of way I do like it.  I like it and I’m flattered by it, and then I go off and dislike it, dislike the effect of it.  I find myself trying to be what you have told me I am—­sort of acting myself.  I want to glance at looking-glasses to see if I am keeping it up.  It’s just exactly what Mr. Britling says in his book about American women.  They act themselves, he says; they get a kind of story and explanation about themselves and they are always trying to make it perfectly plain and clear to every one.  Well, when you do that you can’t think nicely of other things.”

“We like a clear light on people,” said Mr. Direck.

“We don’t.  I suppose we’re shadier,” said Cecily.

“You’re certainly much more in half-tones,” said Mr. Direck.  “And I confess it’s the half-tones get hold of me.  But still you haven’t told me, Miss Cissie, what you think I ought to do with myself.  Here I am, you see, very much at your disposal.  What sort of business do you think it’s my duty to go in for?”

“That’s for some one with more experience than I have, to tell you.  You should ask Mr. Britling.”

“I’d rather have it from you.”

“I don’t even know for myself,” she said.

“So why shouldn’t we start to find out together?” he asked.

It was her tantalising habit to ignore all such tentatives.

“One can’t help the feeling that one is in the world for something more than oneself,” she said....

Section 8

Soon Mr. Direck could measure the time that was left to him at the Dower House no longer by days but by hours.  His luggage was mostly packed, his tickets to Rotterdam, Cologne, Munich, Dresden, Vienna, were all in order.  And things were still very indefinite between him and Cecily.  But God has not made Americans clean-shaven and firm-featured for nothing, and he determined that matters must be brought to some sort of definition before he embarked upon travels that were rapidly losing their attractiveness in this concentration of his attention....

A considerable nervousness betrayed itself in his voice and manner when at last he carried out his determination.

“There’s just a lil’ thing,” he said to her, taking advantage of a moment when they were together after lunch, “that I’d value now more than anything else in the world.”

She answered by a lifted eyebrow and a glance that had not so much inquiry in it as she intended.

“If we could just take a lil’ walk together for a bit.  Round by Claverings Park and all that.  See the deer again and the old trees.  Sort of scenery I’d like to remember when I’m away from it.”