Virginia Woolf: Night and Day

30. CHAPTER XXX (continued)

Some roundness or warmth essential to that statement was absent from his voice, and she had merely to shake her head very slightly for him to drop her hand and turn away in shame at his own impotence. He thought that she had detected his wish to leave her. She had discerned the break in his resolution, the blankness in the heart of his vision. It was true that he had been happier out in the street, thinking of her, than now that he was in the same room with her. He looked at her with a guilty expression on his face. But her look expressed neither disappointment nor reproach. Her pose was easy, and she seemed to give effect to a mood of quiet speculation by the spinning of her ruby ring upon the polished table. Denham forgot his despair in wondering what thoughts now occupied her.

"You don't believe me?" he said. His tone was humble, and made her smile at him.

"As far as I understand you--but what should you advise me to do with this ring?" she asked, holding it out.

"I should advise you to let me keep it for you," he replied, in the same tone of half-humorous gravity.

"After what you've said, I can hardly trust you--unless you'll unsay what you've said?"

"Very well. I'm not in love with you."

"But I think you ARE in love with me. . . . As I am with you," she added casually enough. "At least," she said slipping her ring back to its old position, "what other word describes the state we're in?"

She looked at him gravely and inquiringly, as if in search of help.

"It's when I'm with you that I doubt it, not when I'm alone," he stated.

"So I thought," she replied.

In order to explain to her his state of mind, Ralph recounted his experience with the photograph, the letter, and the flower picked at Kew. She listened very seriously.