But two days after the summer recess began, Walter dropped off the train in her little Norman village.
"It's no use struggling, Beatrice," he said, before she had recovered from her surprise at his invasion. "You're going to write your next novel in Oxford. I've rented the larger house, and as soon as the French law allows we'll get married."
"Nonsense!" she said.
He came over and stood in front of her chair and talked to her in a quiet third personal tone—as if he were the family lawyer.
"B., here we are, two unattached and lonely individuals of the opposite sexes. You said that morning in Paris that we were a sorry couple who had messed things up frightfully and wanted to cry. Well, we've got a bit more used to the mess, don't want to cry as much as we did—but—well, we want to live.
"I was a fool to ask Yetta to marry me, and she was very wise to run away. After all, she and I were strangers. She did not understand me any more than I did her. She was in love with a very nebulous sort of a dream—which I didn't resemble at all.
"It's different with us. At least we've 'the mess' in common. I don't know whether you've tried to forget our—escapade. I haven't. It seems to me, when I think of it, an immensely solemn thing—a memory I want to treasure. Somehow out of our misery a sudden understanding and sympathy was born. I'm inclined to think it was the most fundamental, the most spontaneous and real thing that ever happened to me. I'd chatted with you half a dozen times, had had only one real talk with you back in New York. There in Paris, in two minutes—no, it was a matter of seconds—we knew each other better than—well—it's hard to say what I mean, because I'm not much of a mystic. But never before or since have I experienced a deeper feeling of nearness. Two years pass without a word exchanged, and, in a tawdry hotel parlor in London, with a string of people walking past the open doors, I find the same sudden understanding.
"I don't need to tell you that there in London I wished the people were not walking past the door, that right now I wish your bonne would disappear, so I could—
"But I don't want to talk about that. I'd like to get over something a lot deeper. It's this fundamental and immensely worth-while agreement and sympathy.
"And just because I have this conviction of understanding, I'm sure you're lonely, too—just as lonely as I am. We both of us have a desire for 'the accustomed'—for Lares and Penates. Even an escapade as delightful as the last one wouldn't quite satisfy either of us any more. 'The Other Solution' is the big house in Oxford—with a work-room for you, a study for me, and the other rooms for us."