Virginia Woolf: Night and Day

5. CHAPTER V (continued)

"Ah!" Rodney cried, striking his hand once more upon the balustrade, "why can't one say how beautiful it all is? Why am I condemned for ever, Katharine, to feel what I can't express? And the things I can give there's no use in my giving. Trust me, Katharine," he added hastily, "I won't speak of it again. But in the presence of beauty-- look at the iridescence round the moon!--one feels--one feels--Perhaps if you married me--I'm half a poet, you see, and I can't pretend not to feel what I do feel. If I could write--ah, that would be another matter. I shouldn't bother you to marry me then, Katharine."

He spoke these disconnected sentences rather abruptly, with his eyes alternately upon the moon and upon the stream.

"But for me I suppose you would recommend marriage?" said Katharine, with her eyes fixed on the moon.

"Certainly I should. Not for you only, but for all women. Why, you're nothing at all without it; you're only half alive; using only half your faculties; you must feel that for yourself. That is why--" Here he stopped himself, and they began to walk slowly along the Embankment, the moon fronting them.

"With how sad steps she climbs the sky,
How silently and with how wan a face,"

Rodney quoted.

"I've been told a great many unpleasant things about myself to-night," Katharine stated, without attending to him. "Mr. Denham seems to think it his mission to lecture me, though I hardly know him. By the way, William, you know him; tell me, what is he like?"

William drew a deep sigh.

"We may lecture you till we're blue in the face--"

"Yes--but what's he like?"

"And we write sonnets to your eyebrows, you cruel practical creature. Denham?" he added, as Katharine remained silent. "A good fellow, I should think. He cares, naturally, for the right sort of things, I expect. But you mustn't marry him, though. He scolded you, did he-- what did he say?"