“Won’t you sing it? The whole meaning of life and everything is in the last two Unes.”
“D’you really want me to? I don’t care for it so much because it’s about love. I don’t think love ever made anybody happy.”
For a moment he was tempted to argue this heresy. “But sing it,” he urged.
In a soft sleepy voice she sang:
“The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole world dies
When love is done.”
He waited for her to repeat it When she remained silent, he stopped the car. She turned to him lazily: “Something gone wrong with the engine?”
He was certain she knew what had gone wrong, and was equally certain that she was wilfully pretending to misunderstand him. Far below in the valley, like a faeryring, the lights of Bath winked and twinkled. The silence, after the sound of their going, breathed across the country like a prolonged sighing. How should he tell her? How did men speak to the women they loved? He turned aside from his purpose and procrastinated. “Sing it again,” he pleaded, “the last verse. Now, that everything’s quiet.”