Half mermaid, half angel, she looked. She wore a black bathing-dress, and a beach gown of brilliant violet lay behind her, a little pool of exquisite colour.
No pen can do justice to her, only the brush of a Sargeant or one of those people who have things on the Academy walls that make everybody else's work look dud. I think if I had been an artist I would have burst into a passion of tears—something rose in my throat because she was so lovely; perched there, gold and black, between the misty blue sea and the misty blue sky, all the colour in the morning seemed to be enmeshed in her hair and her beach gown, and the next minute she had dived into the water.
I looked at Cheneston—and I looked away.
If only I might gleam and shine, if only I might palpitate with youth and beauty and stand twixt sky and earth a thing of loveliness! But I knew that no one would stand and stare if I stood where Grace Gilpin had stood a moment before; they would only say: "There's a girl bathing—but she'll find it pretty fresh."
Cheneston was speaking.
"Life isn't fair. One does a thing in pique or temper, or because one's pride is hurt; one thinks the effects will only last a minute, and they last for months and years—they are far-reaching, they involve other people, till sometimes it seems one cannot light a match or perform the most trivial office without involving other destinies and lives. Kid—I never guessed, that night, that all this would happen."
"In a way we're sort of pawns," I said. "It isn't any good fussing, is it? You'll be sent out with this battery for sure, and then things will settle themselves—won't they? I ought to go home to mother and tell her that father went off quite cheerily. She knows, because Mrs. Gilpin went back to her."
I went home. It seems all singularly lacking in tenseness and emotion, it seems common-place—it seems as if I had skipped the great moment and hurried on with the "afterwards"; but there was no great moment, it was all afterwards-ish.
Things went on the same as usual, Cheneston, Grace Gilpin, and I went about together; she had a new man in place of Mr. Markham, a man called Dickie Wontner. The only change I find is in myself.
Oh! I get so angry when people talk of the "peace of love"—there is no peace in it. Maybe there is when you are married, I don't know and probably I never shall; but love is revolutionary, it robs you of your power of concentration—it may only be that you dust the same thing twice, or you put things down and can't remember where you put them, or you forget to take an interest in your friends and lose them without knowing it; but the fact remains that you are only living with half of yourself, the other and more vital half is continually padding round after the beloved like a little invisible dog.