Virginia Woolf: Night and Day

26. CHAPTER XXVI (continued)

"Katharine!" he exclaimed. "You've been out?" he asked.

"Yes. . . . Are they still up?"

He did not answer, and walked into the ground-floor room through the door which stood open.

"It's been more wonderful than I can tell you," he said, "I'm incredibly happy--"

He was scarcely addressing her, and she said nothing. For a moment they stood at opposite sides of a table saying nothing. Then he asked her quickly, "But tell me, how did it seem to you? What did you think, Katharine? Is there a chance that she likes me? Tell me, Katharine!"

Before she could answer a door opened on the landing above and disturbed them. It disturbed William excessively. He started back, walked rapidly into the hall, and said in a loud and ostentatiously ordinary tone:

"Good night, Katharine. Go to bed now. I shall see you soon. I hope I shall be able to come to-morrow."

Next moment he was gone. She went upstairs and found Cassandra on the landing. She held two or three books in her hand, and she was stooping to look at others in a little bookcase. She said that she could never tell which book she wanted to read in bed, poetry, biography, or metaphysics.

"What do you read in bed, Katharine?" she asked, as they walked upstairs side by side.

"Sometimes one thing--sometimes another," said Katharine vaguely. Cassandra looked at her.

"D'you know, you're extraordinarily queer," she said. "Every one seems to me a little queer. Perhaps it's the effect of London."

"Is William queer, too?" Katharine asked.

"Well, I think he is a little," Cassandra replied. "Queer, but very fascinating. I shall read Milton to-night. It's been one of the happiest nights of my life, Katharine," she added, looking with shy devotion at her cousin's beautiful face.