“I can’t,” she said unexpectedly.
“Can’t what?”
“Realise their misery with all this beauty around. It’s heartless, hateful, but one pushes out the other.”
“Let it go,” he said, watching her changing face.
“It must,” she smiled. “All the same I shall hush up my conscience in ways which will shock you. Look!” She drew from her pocket a handful of soldi. “I mean the children to have a real good time, in spite of you and Sylvia.”
She tossed pennies into the air and caught them, without noticing that a sudden silence had fallen.
Wilbraham had gone on day after day refusing to look before him, refusing to go beyond the events of the day. He was often irritated or provoked by Sylvia; but often, alas, he was happy, without asking himself why. Now, all of a sudden it flashed upon him that it was Teresa’s nearness, and with the knowledge rushed a wild, scarcely controllable, impulse to strain her in his arms. The self-control of all his years luckily came to his help, and the young marchesa, looking out at the lovely world before her, and thinking of nothing less than her companion, except as he touched Sylvia’s life, was quite unconscious of the struggle in the man’s heart.
“We ought to go—I suppose,” she said reluctantly, without moving.
Wilbraham was silent. Unseen by her, he was fingering a fold of her dress which lay on the grass close to him. Teresa laughed lightly the next minute.
“It is a pity, isn’t it, that one never can enjoy an exquisite moment without thinking what has to be done in the next? At least I can’t.”