‘Certainly I did, but I thought you didn’t know that I went there,’ she said.
‘Ditto,’ said I.
There was a huge rushing wind out of the south-west, and we stood a little while inhaling the boisterousness of it. All spring was in it, all the renewal of life.
‘How Legs is laughing at us!’ she said.
‘I don’t care. Let’s have the museum of young things. Let’s put there all the things we can’t throw away. Oh, Helen, there are photographs, too! There is one of him in his last half at Eton.... There is one of you and me when the Canadian canoe sank gently, and as we stood dripping on the shore he photographed us. And I photographed him and you when you said you would skate a rocking-turn together, and fell down. Heart’s blood, heart’s blood! There ought to be a law which makes it a penal offence to keep photographs,’
I suppose I had got excited, for Helen took my arm and said:
‘There, there!’
But even that did not do.
‘Oh, the pity of it,’ I cried—‘the pity of it! Why didn’t he take a train to come down? Why didn’t that omnibus pull up? He was ours, and he would have married, and still been ours, and there would have been young things about the house again.’
I suppose I had torn away from her, for now we were apart, facing each other, at the end of this; and she smiled so quietly, so serenely.