“Not in the least; only, you’d never seen her in your life at the time when”—I gathered all my innermost strength together to bring the words out—“at the time when I talked to you last.”
She, too, gathered her innermost strength together, rising to the reference gallantly.
“Oh, well, a good many things have happened since then.”
Before going further I was obliged to pause and reckon how much I dared. Of the many sensitive points in my history, we were touching on the most sensitive. I was fully aware that since the sleeping dog was sleeping it might be better to let him lie. Once he was roused, there might be a new set of perils to deal with, perils we could avoid by softly stepping round them. That Paolo should go one way in space and Francesca another seemed to be decreed by inevitable fate; so why interfere with the process?
I should probably not have interfered with it had the circumstances not raised us above the sphere of our ordinary interests. The roar of the wind, the tumult of the sea, the plunging of the ship, the indescribable whining of shells, the knowledge of danger—were as the orchestra which lifts the duet to emotional planes that dialogue alone could never attain to. Though our words might be commonplace, every syllable was charged with tones and overtones and undertones of meaning to be seized by something more subtle than intelligence. Prudence might have said, “Let everything alone,” but that urging of the being which escapes the leash of prudence drove me on to speak.
“Do you remember when I talked to you last?”
She answered with the detachment of a witness under compulsion to tell the truth. The personal was as far as possible eliminated from her voice.
“Perfectly.”
“We—we seemed to—to break off in the middle of a conversation.”