The next day I did an unexampled thing. I sent a telegram to my uncle,
“_Bad temper not coming to business_,” and set off for Highgate and
Ewart. He was actually at work—on a bust of Millie, and seemed very
glad for any interruption.
“Ewart, you old Fool,” I said, “knock off and come for a day’s gossip.
I’m rotten. There’s a sympathetic sort of lunacy about you. Let’s go to
Staines and paddle up to Windsor.”
“Girl?” said Ewart, putting down a chisel.
“Yes.”
That was all I told him of my affair.
“I’ve got no money,” he remarked, to clear up ambiguity in my
invitation.
We got a jar of shandy-gaff, some food, and, on Ewart’s suggestion, two
Japanese sunshades in Staines; we demanded extra cushions at the
boathouse and we spent an enormously soothing day in discourse and
meditation, our boat moored in a shady place this side of Windsor. I
seem to remember Ewart with a cushion forward, only his heels and
sunshade and some black ends of hair showing, a voice and no more,
against the shining, smoothly-streaming mirror of the trees and bushes.
“It’s not worth it,” was the burthen of the voice. “You’d better get
yourself a Millie, Ponderevo, and then you wouldn’t feel so upset.”
“No,” I said decidedly, “that’s not my way.”
A thread of smoke ascended from Ewart for a while, like smoke from an
altar.
“Everything’s a muddle, and you think it isn’t. Nobody knows where we
are—because, as a matter of fact we aren’t anywhere. Are women
property—or are they fellow-creatures? Or a sort of proprietary
goddesses? They’re so obviously fellow-creatures. You believe in the
goddess?”
“No,” I said, “that’s not my idea.”
“What is your idea?”
“Well”
“H’m,” said Ewart, in my pause.
“My idea,” I said, “is to meet one person who will belong to me—to whom
I shall belong—body and soul. No half-gods! Wait till she comes. If she
comes at all.... We must come to each other young and pure.”
“There’s no such thing as a pure person or an impure person.... Mixed
to begin with.”
This was so manifestly true that it silenced me altogether.
“And if you belong to her and she to you, Ponderevo—which end’s the
head?”