A Room with a View

Lucy Worries Cecil Disapproves of Her Close Acquaintances

Lucy reflects on Cecil’s evident dislike of Sir Harry Otway and Mr. Beebe and worries about who else might displease him. She thinks specifically of Freddy, who is neither clever nor subtle nor beautiful, and wonders what she would say if Cecil pronounced it wrong not to loathe him. She can only console herself that Cecil has known Freddy some time and that they have always got on pleasantly, except possibly during the last few days, which she hopes is an accident.

Cecil Chooses a Woodland Walk Over the Road

Lucy asks Cecil which way they should walk. Summer Street lies deep in the woods and a footpath diverges from the highroad at the spot where she has stopped. Cecil asks if there are two ways, and though Lucy notes that the road might be more sensible because they are dressed up, Cecil insists on going through the wood, with a subdued irritation Lucy has noticed all afternoon. He reproaches her for always suggesting the road and for never having been with him in the fields or the woods since their engagement. Startled by his queerness, Lucy agrees and leads the way into the whispering pines, expecting an explanation.

Conversation Linking Cecil to Rooms Rather Than Nature

Sure enough, Cecil explains before they have gone a dozen yards. He had imagined, perhaps wrongly, that Lucy feels more at home with him in a room rather than in the real country like this. Lucy protests bewilderedly, declaring she has never felt anything of the sort and insisting she is not a “poetess sort of person.” Cecil counters that he connects her with a view, a certain type of view, and asks why she should not connect him with a room. Lucy reflects and then agrees, laughing, that she does think of him as in a room, a room with no view. Cecil, to her surprise, is annoyed by this and says reproachfully that he would rather she connected him with the open air. Lucy repeats her bewilderment, “Oh, Cecil, whatever do you mean?” As no explanation comes, she shakes off the subject as too difficult for a girl.

At the Sacred Lake: Reminiscing and Cecil’s Admiration

Lucy shakes off the difficult subject and leads Cecil deeper into the wood, pausing at particularly beautiful or familiar combinations of the trees. She has known the wood between Summer Street and Windy Corner since she could walk alone; she used to play at losing Freddy in it when he was a purple-faced baby; and although she has been to Italy, the wood has lost none of its charm. Presently they come to a little clearing among the pines, a tiny green alp that holds a shallow pool. Lucy exclaims “The Sacred Lake!” and explains she cannot remember why she calls it that, perhaps from some book; after heavy rains a good deal of water comes down and the pool becomes quite large and beautiful, and Freddy used to bathe there. When Cecil asks if she is fond of it too, she answers dreamily that she used to bathe there herself until she was found out, after which there was a row. Cecil, delighted rather than shocked by what he calls her admirable simplicity, looks at her by the pool’s edge and is reminded of a brilliant flower that blooms abruptly out of a world of green. She tells him it was Charlotte who found her out, murmuring the name over; Cecil says “Poor girl!” with no understanding of its full weight, and a certain scheme he had shrunk from now appears practical.

Cecil’s First Kiss Request and Disappointing Embrace

In the secluded setting, Cecil becomes serious and tells Lucy he wants to ask her something he has never asked before, reminding her that he never did so even on the lawn when she agreed to marry him. He grows self-conscious, glancing round to see if they are observed, and his courage fails. Lucy waits, kindly, until he finally says that up to now he has never kissed her. She flushes scarlet and stammers, “No—more you have.” He asks whether he may now, and she tells him of course he may, that he might have done so before, and that she cannot run at him. At the supreme moment he is conscious only of absurdities: her reply is inadequate, she gives a business-like lift to her veil, and as he approaches he wishes he could recoil; as he touches her, his gold pince-nez is dislodged and flattened between them. Cecil reflects that the embrace was a failure, arguing that passion should forget civility and consideration and never ask leave where there is a right of way; he recasts the scene in his mind, imagining himself rushing up to seize her so that she might then permit and revere him for his manliness.