Virginia Woolf: Night and Day

29. CHAPTER XXIX (continued)

"No, we're not engaged," Katharine repeated. "But no one knows it but ourselves."

"But why--I don't understand--you're not engaged!" Cassandra said again. "Oh, that explains it! You're not in love with him! You don't want to marry him!"

"We aren't in love with each other any longer," said Katharine, as if disposing of something for ever and ever.

"How queer, how strange, how unlike other people you are, Katharine," Cassandra said, her whole body and voice seeming to fall and collapse together, and no trace of anger or excitement remaining, but only a dreamy quietude.

"You're not in love with him?"

"But I love him," said Katharine.

Cassandra remained bowed, as if by the weight of the revelation, for some little while longer. Nor did Katharine speak. Her attitude was that of some one who wishes to be concealed as much as possible from observation. She sighed profoundly; she was absolutely silent, and apparently overcome by her thoughts.

"D'you know what time it is?" she said at length, and shook her pillow, as if making ready for sleep.

Cassandra rose obediently, and once more took up her candle. Perhaps the white dressing-gown, and the loosened hair, and something unseeing in the expression of the eyes gave her a likeness to a woman walking in her sleep. Katharine, at least, thought so.

"There's no reason why I should go home, then?" Cassandra said, pausing. "Unless you want me to go, Katharine? What DO you want me to do?"

For the first time their eyes met.

"You wanted us to fall in love," Cassandra exclaimed, as if she read the certainty there. But as she looked she saw a sight that surprised her. The tears rose slowly in Katharine's eyes and stood there, brimming but contained--the tears of some profound emotion, happiness, grief, renunciation; an emotion so complex in its nature that to express it was impossible, and Cassandra, bending her head and receiving the tears upon her cheek, accepted them in silence as the consecration of her love.