“There would have been nothing to be anxious about,” she said. “I seldom catch a chill. And I often paddled.”
He laid down his knife and fork and laughed.
“You paddled!” he asked. “Nonsense, nonsense!”
She had not meant to tell him, for her reasonable mind had informed her all the time that this was a secret expression of the rejuvenation she was conscious of. But it had slipped out, a thoughtless assertion of the youthfulness she felt.
“I did indeed,” she said, “and I found it very bracing and invigorating.”
Then for a moment a certain bitterness welled up within her, born from disappointment at his imperceptiveness.
“You see I never suffer from gout or rheumatism like you, Lyndhurst,” she said. “I hope you have been quite free from them since I have been away.”
But his amusement, though it had produced this spirit of rancour in her, had not been in the least unkindly. It was legitimate to find entertainment in the thought of a middle-aged woman gravely paddling, so long as he had no idea that there was a most pathetic side to it. Of that he had no inkling: he was unaware that this paddling was expressive of her feeling of recaptured youth, just as he was unaware that she believed it to be expressed in her face and hair. But this remark was distinctly of the nature of an attack: she was retaliating for his laughter. He could not resist one further answer which might both soothe and smart (like a patent ointment) before he changed the subject.
“Well, my dear, I’m sure you are a wonderful woman for your years,” he said. “By Jove! I shall be proud if I’m as active and healthy as you in ten years’ time.”
Dinner was soon over after this, and she left him, as usual, to have his cigarette and glass of port, and went into the drawing-room, and stood looking on the last fading splendour of the sunset in the west. The momentary bitterness in her mind had quite died down again: there was nothing left but a vague, dull ache of flatness and disappointment. He had noticed nothing of all that had caused her such tremulous and secret joy. He had looked on her smoothed and softened face, and seen no difference there, on her brown unfaded hair and found it unaltered. He had only seen that she had put her best gown on, and she had almost wished that he had not noticed that, since then she might have had the consolation of thinking that he was ill. It was not, it must be premised, that she meant she would find pleasure in his indisposition, only that an indisposition would have explained his imperceptiveness, which she regretted more than she would have regretted a slight headache for him.