“Ah, that I can’t tell. Perhaps it didn’t begin. Perhaps it was always there. I knew it for the first time when I was ordered to France; that day I came to say good-bye to you and Malcolm in London—before he went.”
The name of her dead husband brought the cloud about her again. “Oh, yes,” she murmured. “I remember that day. I was horribly frightened over the war. I had a presentiment. I knew he was going to volunteer.”
“It could hardly have been a presentiment. He evidently would.”
She showed no resentment for his clipping of her dark pinions. It was as if she still hovered on them as she said: “Of course. I mean presentiment of what came after that. What had to come. Don’t you believe in Fate, Bevis? Perhaps it was that you felt in me. You had never seen me suffering before.”
“Perhaps,” said the young man, sceptically if kindly. “However, I don’t want to talk about it,” he added. “That is, unless you do, very much.”
She looked up at him, still unresentful, but now a little ironic, though irony was not her note. “You are an odd lover, Bevis.”
“Am I?”
“You don’t like declaring your love.”
“I have declared it.”
“You don’t like talking about it.”