"What has become of Mr. Fred Comfrey, Pam? I haven't seen him since father found out what sort of a fellow he was, and wouldn't have anything more to do with him."
Her face grew shadowed again. "He doesn't come here," she said. "Mrs. Comfrey thinks it is my fault. At least, she'll hardly speak to me; and I suppose it is that. I'm not sure that I ought not to have given him my answer myself, instead of leaving it to Daddy."
"Oh, my dear child, it was infernal impudence of him to think about you at all—a creature like that!"
"Well, I suppose you have always been right about him. But he showed his best side to me. There was a lot that was good and kind in him."
"Nobody is all bad, I suppose; and even a beast like that rises to something, when he's thinking about somebody else, and not always about himself. The trouble is, though, that it doesn't always last. I've seen it in marriages made in a hurry during the war. What's so heavenly about us, Pam, is that we do know each other; and yet there's always something new, somehow. I don't believe there's anybody in the world loves somebody else more than I love you. And I love you more and more every day. I may have made one or two half-hearted experiments before, but there was never anything like this."
"Not even when Margaret said 'Good-bye, Norman'?"
"That was a thrill, I admit. But what a faint thrill, after all! Nothing like what I get every time you come into a room. But there's something more than thrills in it. The thrills are only the ripples on the surface. The real love is the quiet deep water underneath. That's what we've got, darling. It will last us all our lives."
They had come down to Barton's Close, where the thick grass had already hidden all signs of the disturbance to which it had been subjected. They found a bank on the edge of it bright with primroses, upon which the sun was shining, and sat there for a time. Looking over the rich green carpet of the meadow, it was natural that they should fall into talk of the disturbances that had had their rise here; for there was no subject that they shirked, and this one had affected them deeply.
"Of course it was nothing in itself," Norman said. "If it hadn't been for an accident here and there, they would have settled it at once. Father says that. It began with their writing letters to one another, instead of talking it over. Then when they did talk the quarrel had gone too far."
"Does Uncle Bill talk about it still?"