JUNO, continued

At first what was it but an apprehension sweet as far bird song - a tremulous thing - an awareness that fate had thrown them together; a world had been brought into being - had been discovered? A world, a universe over whose boundaries and into whose forests they had not dared to venture. A world to be glimpsed, not from some crest of the imagination, but through simple words, empty in themselves as air, and sentences quite colourless and void; save that they set their pulses racing.

Theirs was a small talk - that evoked the measureless avenues of the night, and the green glades of noonday. When they said 'Hullo' new stars appeared in the sky; when they laughed this wild world split its sides, though what was so funny neither of them knew. It was a game of the fantastic senses; febrile, tender, tip-tilted. They would lean on the window-sill of Juno's beautiful room and gaze for hours on end at the far hills where the trees and buildings were so close together, so interwoven, it was impossible to say whether it was a city in a forest or a forest in a city. There they leaned in the golden light, sometimes happy to talk - sometimes basking in a miraculous silence.

Was Titus in love with his guardian, and was she in love with him?

p.88, Titus Alone, by Mervyn Peake, 1959