Virginia Woolf: Night and Day

24. CHAPTER XXIV (continued)

The reading seemed to Rodney to take an intolerably long time.

"Yes," she observed at length, "a very charming letter."

Rodney's face was half turned away, as if in bashfulness. Her view of his profile almost moved her to laughter. She glanced through the pages once more.

"I see no harm," William blurted out, "in helping her--with Greek, for example--if she really cares for that sort of thing."

"There's no reason why she shouldn't care," said Katharine, consulting the pages once more. "In fact--ah, here it is--'The Greek alphabet is absolutely FASCINATING.' Obviously she does care."

"Well, Greek may be rather a large order. I was thinking chiefly of English. Her criticisms of my play, though they're too generous, evidently immature--she can't be more than twenty-two, I suppose?-- they certainly show the sort of thing one wants: real feeling for poetry, understanding, not formed, of course, but it's at the root of everything after all. There'd be no harm in lending her books?"

"No. Certainly not."

"But if it--hum--led to a correspondence? I mean, Katharine, I take it, without going into matters which seem to me a little morbid, I mean," he floundered, "you, from your point of view, feel that there's nothing disagreeable to you in the notion? If so, you've only to speak, and I never think of it again."

She was surprised by the violence of her desire that he never should think of it again. For an instant it seemed to her impossible to surrender an intimacy, which might not be the intimacy of love, but was certainly the intimacy of true friendship, to any woman in the world. Cassandra would never understand him--she was not good enough for him. The letter seemed to her a letter of flattery--a letter addressed to his weakness, which it made her angry to think was known to another. For he was not weak; he had the rare strength of doing what he promised--she had only to speak, and he would never think of Cassandra again.