Virginia Woolf: Night and Day

29. CHAPTER XXIX (continued)

As he said this, the curtains hanging at the door of the little room parted, and Cassandra herself stepped forth.

"I have overheard every word!" she exclaimed.

A pause succeeded this announcement. Rodney made a step forward and said:

"Then you know what I wish to ask you. Give me your answer--"

She put her hands before her face; she turned away and seemed to shrink from both of them.

"What Katharine said," she murmured. "But," she added, raising her head with a look of fear from the kiss with which he greeted her admission, "how frightfully difficult it all is! Our feelings, I mean --yours and mine and Katharine's. Katharine, tell me, are we doing right?"

"Right--of course we're doing right," William answered her, "if, after what you've heard, you can marry a man of such incomprehensible confusion, such deplorable--"

"Don't, William," Katharine interposed; "Cassandra has heard us; she can judge what we are; she knows better than we could tell her."

But, still holding William's hand, questions and desires welled up in Cassandra's heart. Had she done wrong in listening? Why did Aunt Celia blame her? Did Katharine think her right? Above all, did William really love her, for ever and ever, better than any one?

"I must be first with him, Katharine!" she exclaimed. "I can't share him even with you."

"I shall never ask that," said Katharine. She moved a little away from where they sat and began half-consciously sorting her flowers.

"But you've shared with me," Cassandra said. "Why can't I share with you? Why am I so mean? I know why it is," she added. "We understand each other, William and I. You've never understood each other. You're too different."

"I've never admired anybody more," William interposed.