"Shall I tell you?" he asked, with a sudden fire in his eyes.
"For heaven's sake, no!" she begged, thrusting out her hands. "I'm afraid to think—afraid of actual thoughts. Don't let us give form to anything. Let me be content to just feel this new warmth in my life."
She leaned back in her chair with a contented sigh. A little tug came snorting up the river. Even the roar of the traffic over Waterloo Bridge seemed muffled and disintegrated by the breeze which swept on its way through the rustling lime trees.
"You are wonderfully situated here," she went on. "I don't believe it is London at all. It rests me more than any place I have been in for a long time, and yet—at the same time—I think that it is going to make me sad."
"Sad? But why?" he asked anxiously.
"Because it seems like one of the stopping places—where one steps off to think, you know. I don't want to think. I have had nine such miserable years. All through the war there was one's work, one's hospital, the excitement of the gigantic struggle. And now everything seems flat. One struggles on without incentive. One lives without hope."
"We weren't meant to do that," he protested.
"Only those of us who have thrown our lives away," she went on wearily. "You see, I thought Henry was different. I thought he only wanted a little understanding, a little kindness. I made a mistake."
"Life is too wonderful a thing," he insisted, "to lose the glory of it for one mistake."
"I am on the rocks," she sighed, "now and always. If I were made like your little luncheon friend, it might be different. I suppose I should spread my wings and settle down upon another planet. But I can't. I am differently made. I am not proud of it. I wish I weren't. It wouldn't all seem so hard then, I am still young, you know, really," she added, with a note of rebellion in her tone.