Her mind stammered again, and broke off.
“Frederick—” she tried to say; but no sound came, or if it did the crackling of the fire covered it up.
She must go nearer. She began to creep towards him—softly, softly.
He did not move. He had not heard.
She stole nearer and nearer, and the fire crackled and he heard nothing.
She stopped a moment, unable to breathe. She was afraid. Suppose he—suppose he—oh, but he had come, he had come.
She went on again, close up to him, and her heart beat so loud that she thought he must hear it. And couldn’t he feel—didn’t he know—
“Frederick,” she whispered, hardly able even to whisper, choked by the beating of her heart.
He spun round on his heels.
“Rose!” he exclaimed, staring blankly.
But she did not see his stare, for her arms were round his neck, and her cheek was against his, and she was murmuring, her lips on his ear, “I knew you would come—in my very heart I always, always knew you would come—”
XXI
Now Frederick was not the man to hurt anything if he could help it; besides, he was completely bewildered. Not only was his wife here—here, of all places in the world—but she was clinging to him as she had not clung for years, and murmuring love, and welcoming him. If she welcomed him she must have been expecting him. Strange as this was, it was the only thing in the situation which was evident—that, and the softness of her cheek against his, and the long-forgotten sweet smell of her.
Frederick was bewildered. But not being the man to hurt anything if he could help it he too put his arms round her, and having put them round her he also kissed her; and presently he was kissing her almost as tenderly as she was kissing him; and presently he was kissing her quite as tenderly; and again presently he was kissing her more tenderly, and just as if he had never left off.
He was bewildered, but he still could kiss. It seemed curiously natural to be doing it. It made him feel as if he were thirty again instead of forty, and Rose were his Rose of twenty, the Rose he had so much adored before she began to weigh what he did with her idea of right, and the balance went against him, and she had turned strange, and stony, and more and more shocked, and oh, so lamentable. He couldn’t get at her in those days at all; she wouldn’t, she couldn’t understand. She kept on referring everything to what she called God’s eyes—in God’s eyes it couldn’t be right, it wasn’t right. Her miserable face—whatever her principles did for her they didn’t make her happy—her little miserable face, twisted with effort to be patient, had been at last more than he could bear to see, and he had kept away as much as he could. She never ought to have been the daughter of a low-church rector—narrow devil; she was quite unfitted to stand up against such an upbringing.
What had happened, why she was here, why she was his Rose again, passed his comprehension; and meanwhile, and until such time as he understood, he still could kiss. In fact he could not stop kissing; and it was he now who began to murmur, to say love things in her ear under the hair that smelt so sweet and tickled him just as he remembered it used to tickle him.
And as he held her close to his heart and her arms were soft round his neck, he felt stealing over him a delicious sense of—at first he didn’t know what it was, this delicate, pervading warmth, and then he recognised it as security. Yes; security. No need now to be ashamed of his figure, and to make jokes about it so as to forestall other people’s and show he didn’t mind it; no need now to be ashamed of getting hot going up hills, or to torment himself with pictures of how he probably appeared to beautiful young women—how middle-aged, how absurd in his inability to keep away from them. Rose cared nothing for such things. With her he was safe. To her he was her lover, as he used to be; and she would never notice or mind any of the ignoble changes that getting older had made in him and would go on making more and more.
Frederick continued, therefore, with greater and greater warmth and growing delight to kiss his wife, and the mere holding of her in his arms caused him to forget everything else. How could he, for instance, remember or think of Lady Caroline, to mention only one of the complications with which his situation bristled, when here was his sweet wife, miraculously restored to him, whispering with her cheek against his in the dearest, most romantic words how much she loved him, how terribly she had missed him? He did for one brief instant, for even in moments of love there are brief instants of lucid thought, recognise the immense power of the woman present and being actually held compared to that of the woman, however beautiful, who is somewhere else, but that is as far as he got towards remembering Scrap; no farther. She was like a dream, fleeing before the morning light.
“When did you start?” murmured Rose, her mouth on his ear. She couldn’t let him go; not even to talk she couldn’t let him go.
“Yesterday morning,” murmured Frederick, holding her close. He couldn’t let her go either.
“Oh—the very instant then,” murmured Rose.
This was cryptic, but Frederick said, “Yes, the very instant,” and kissed her neck.
“How quickly my letter got to you,” murmured Rose, whose eyes were shut in the excess of her happiness.
“Didn’t it,” said Frederick, who felt like shutting his eyes himself.
So there had been a letter. Soon, no doubt, light would be vouchsafed him,
