Her sadness hurt him. She knew it; she told herself that it would always hurt him. He didn’t want ever to say good-bye to her. And she, she felt sure that their comradeship would be always finding a new ending.
“Cherry, darling,” he reproached her, “don’t go in search of unhappiness. Life’s a to-morrow as well as a yesterday; it’s full of splendid things—things which aren’t expected. We’ve all the to-morrows before us.”
She trailed her hand in the water, snatching at the lilies, as if by an effort so slight she could delay their progress and prolong the present. She didn’t lift her eyes when she whispered, “I was thinking of that—of all the to-morrows before us.”
Again her words brought a vision of the long road of future days, down which he would walk without her. There was nothing to be said. Surely she would learn to love him! Reluctantly he paddled forward to their place of parting.
CHAPTER XXXII—IF YOU WON’T COME TO HEAVEN, THEN——
The train swung down the shining rails and rumbled into Paddington. Passengers pulled down their parcels from the racks, jumped out and disappeared in the crowd. Peter sat on. This carriage at least had known her; she had looked in through its window and had waved her hand. Out there in the stone-paved wilderness of London there was nothing they had shared.
A porter looked in at the door. “Train don’t go no further, sir. Lend you a ‘and? Want a keb?”
In the cab, Peter closed his eyes, shutting out the cheerful grime of streets, the nipped impertinence of Cockney faces, the monotonous anonymity of the ceaseless procession—the stench of this vast human stable where lives were stalled and broken. He was trying to get back to green banks, to a river molten in the sunset, and to a redlipped girl.