“Elizabeth! How dare you? She’ll love you—just as I do. No, not as I do at all. Darling, I adore your hair, it smells of all the flowers in the world, but I’d like to see your face.”

She turned it upwards in blushing obedience. She saw his eyes grow dark and grave.

“Elizabeth—” He stopped and quite gently kissed her.

“There’s so much I want to say, and I can’t say it without sounding like a third-rate novel. I’d like to say all the things that I thought I never should say. I want to tell you that your eyes are like pansies, all velvety and soft, but I know quite well from the solemn look on your face that you’ll think I’m just phrase-making.”

She had not thought it; his whimsicality and the quick predominance of his humour puzzled her; she had not imagined that her lover would be like this, and laugh even when he said that she was beautiful. The tiny catch in his voice told her that although he joked, his feeling for her was serious, more serious perhaps than he dared to show? her. And yet his joking was a jarring note to her. Love-making was something that was holy and solemn, like going to church; he should not have laughed. After yesterday everything seemed a little flat. She had expected to feel a heroine’s exultation when Stephen slipped the ring on to her finger, but the ring was too big, and she had wanted sapphires.

He left her when Miss Arden came in, and she spent the morning wondering what Mrs. Ramsay would say to her, and what she would say to Mrs. Ramsay.

But Mrs. Ramsay made everything easy. When Elizabeth entered her drawing-room she came forward quickly and held out both her hands.

“Elizabeth, can I congratulate you, or does that sound as though I were too proud of my son?”

Then Elizabeth laughed, and kissed her, and some of the tension was gone.

“It was so nice of you to ask me to come to-day,” Elizabeth stammered.

“My dear, of course I wanted to see you at once. We hardly know one another, do we? Still, I always believe what Stephen tells me because he’s usually right, and he says that I shall love you. Oh, do sit down!”

“Stephen says that I shall love you too,” Elizabeth smiled.

“Please do! I’m a horribly spoiled person, and I can’t bear it if people don’t like me. By the way, I must introduce you to Thomas. Such a darling. Thomas, where are you?”

Thomas, who was a bull terrier, came stiffly from behind the sofa, and snuffed enquiringly at Elizabeth’s ankles. She patted him and fondled his ears, and he put his forepaws on her knee.