"No, that would be foolish, and wrong—as you say, morbid. But it can't be—whatever she says to me—it can't be as if he had never existed—as if it all hadn't happened."
"Some people feel things too little, some feel them too much," the Nun observed. "Both bad habits!"
"I daresay the thing's a bit more than usual on my mind to-night—because of to-morrow, you know." He was silent for a moment; then he broke into one of his simple hearty laughs. "And I am such an awful duffer at making love!"
"You certainly have no great natural talent for it and, as you've told me, very little practice. Oh, I wonder how big your majority will be, Andy!"
Andy readily turned back to the election. Yet even here the attitude she had reproved in him seemed to persist. "I expect, as I said, about six hundred. Harry would have got a thousand easily."
Andy escorted Vivien back to Nutley. He had it in mind to speak his heart—at least to sound her feeling for him; but she forestalled his opening.
"Mr. Belfield's been talking to me about Harry to-night, for the first time. He wrote me a letter once, but he has never spoken of him before. He was rather pathetic. Oh, Andy, why can't people think what they are doing to other people? And poor Isobel—I'm afraid she won't be happy. I used to feel very hard about her. I can't any more, now that the little child has come. That seems to make it all right somehow, whatever has happened before. At any rate she's got the best right now, hasn't she?" She was silent a moment. "It was like this that I came home with him that last evening. He was so gay and so kind. Then—in a flash—it happened!"
"I've been thinking about him too to-night. It seemed natural to do it—over this election."
They had reached Nutley, but Andy pleaded for a walk on the terrace by the lake before she bade him good-night.
"Yes," she said, "I know what you must feel, because you loved him. I loved him, and I feel it too. But we must neither of us think about it too much. Because it's no use. What Mr. Belfield told me makes it quite clear that it's no use." She spoke very sadly. They had not to do with an accident or an episode; they had to recognise and reckon with the nature of a man. "When once we see that it's no use, it seems to me that there's something—well, almost something unworthy in giving way to it." She turned round to Andy. "At least I don't want you to go on doing it. You've made your own success. Take it whole-heartedly, Andy; don't have any regrets, any searchings of heart."