He looked very hard before him as he said this, and his voice was full of deep feeling.
“Grail!” said Ann Veronica, and then: “Oh, yes — of course! Anything but a holy one, I’m afraid.”
“Altogether holy, Ann Veronica. Ah! but you can’t imagine what you are to me and what you mean to me! I suppose there is something mystical and wonderful about all women.”
“There is something mystical and wonderful about all human beings. I don’t see that men need bank it with the women.”
“A man does,” said Manning —“a true man, anyhow. And for me there is only one treasure-house. By Jove! When I think of it I want to leap and shout!”
“It would astonish that man with the barrow.”
“It astonishes me that I don’t,” said Manning, in a tone of intense self-enjoyment.
“I think,” began Ann Veronica, “that you don’t realize —”
He disregarded her entirely. He waved an arm and spoke with a peculiar resonance. “I feel like a giant! I believe now I shall do great things. Gods! what it must be to pour out strong, splendid verse — mighty lines! mighty lines! If I do, Ann Veronica, it will be you. It will be altogether you. I will dedicate my books to you. I will lay them all at your feet.”
He beamed upon her.
“I don’t think you realize,” Ann Veronica began again, “that I am rather a defective human being.”
“I don’t want to,” said Manning. “They say there are spots on the sun. Not for me. It warms me, and lights me, and fills my world with flowers. Why should I peep at it through smoked glass to see things that don’t affect me?” He smiled his delight at his companion.
“I’ve got bad faults.”
He shook his head slowly, smiling mysteriously.
“But perhaps I want to confess them.”
“I grant you absolution.”
“I don’t want absolution. I want to make myself visible to you.”
“I wish I could make you visible to yourself. I don’t believe in the faults. They’re just a joyous softening of the outline — more beautiful than perfection. Like the flaws of an old marble. If you talk of your faults, I shall talk of your splendors.”
“I do want to tell you things, nevertheless.”
“We’ll have, thank God! ten myriad days to tell each other things. When I think of it —”
“But these are things I want to tell you now!”
“I made a little song of it. Let me say it to you. I’ve no name for it yet. Epithalamy might do.
?“Like him who stood on Darien
?I view uncharted sea
?Ten thousand days, ten thousand nights
?Before my Queen and me.
“And that only brings me up to about sixty-five!
?“A glittering wilderness of time
?That to the sunset reaches
?No keel as yet its waves has ploughed
?Or gritted on its beaches.
?“And we will sail that splendor wide,
?From day to day together,
?From isle to isle of happiness
?Through year’s of God’s own weather.”
“Yes,” said his prospective fellow-sailor, “that’s very pretty.” She stopped short, full of things unsaid. Pretty! Ten thousand days, ten thousand nights!
“You shall tell me your faults,” said Manning. “If they matter to you, they matter.”
“It isn’t precisely faults,” said Ann Veronica. “It’s something that bothers me.” Ten thousand! Put that way it seemed so different.
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