Chapter 4

Till the following Friday his week was harassed. It was wonderful to be in love, to have found her, but it would have been still more wonderful if he had known a little more about her. He wanted to be able to think of her and follow her through each minute of the day, —picture her, see her in his mind’s eye doing this and doing that, going here and going there; and there was nothing but a blank.

They were such strangers. Only, of course, strangers on the lower level of everyday circumstances. On the higher level, the starry level of splendid, unreasoning love, he had, as he told her, always known her. But to know her on that level and not on any other was awkward. It cut him off so completely. He couldn’t think what to do next.

Once, before he met her, in those dark days when he was still a fool and reasoned, he had remarked to Lewes that he thought it a pity and liable to lead to disappointment that love should begin, as it apparently did begin, suddenly, at the top of emotion. There ought, he said, to be a gradual development in acquaintanceship, a steady unfolding of knowledge of each other, a preparatory and of course extremely agreeable crescendo, leading up to the august passion itself. As it was, ignorant of everything really about the woman except what she looked and sounded like, why—there you were. It was bad, finished Christopher, aloofly considering the faulty arrangements of nature, to start with infatuation, because you couldn’t possibly do anything after that but cool off.

Now, remembering this when he couldn’t sleep one night, he laughed himself to scorn for a prig and an idiot. That’s all one knew about it when one wasn’t in love oneself. Love gave one a sixth sense. It instantly apprehended. The symbol of the sweet outer aspect of the loved one was before one’s eyes; from it one was aware of her inward and spiritual grace. The beloved looked so and so; therefore she was so and so. Love knew. But, on a lower level, on the level of mere convenience, it would be better, he admitted, to have had some preliminary acquaintance. He worshipped Catherine, and they were strangers. This was awkward. It cut him off. He didn’t know what to do next.

‘I must see you,’ he wrote, after three evenings at The Immortal Hour by himself. ‘When can I?’

And he sent the note with some roses, —those delicate pale roses in bud that come out so exquisitely in a warm atmosphere. They reminded him of her. They too were symbols, he said to himself, symbols of what would happen to her also if only she would let him be her atmosphere, her warmth; and though these roses were very expensive—ever so much for each bud—he sent three dozen, a real bunch of them, rejoicing in the extravagance, in doing something for her that he couldn’t really afford.

She wrote back: ‘But you are coming to tea on Sunday. Didn’t we say you were? Your roses are quite beautiful. Thank you so very, very much.’