“Where do they live?” Edwin asked.
“Somewhere over in the Teme valley, I think. Lord Alfred’s a great fisherman. He’s a nice chap.”
“And she lives with him?”
“Yes. . . . I think he’s sort of adopted her. But I understand she’s going to India sometime next month.”
“India? What on earth is she going to India for?”
“Going to be married to some fellow in the Indian army. A major, I think he is.”
“To be married—” said Edwin.
And the train pulled up at Mawne Hall.
IV
He took it very hardly. On the face of it, it seemed that her kiss had been no more than a piece of mad, cynical trifling; but his respect for himself—which was considerable, as became his years—would not allow him to believe this. He decided, instead, that Dorothy Powys’s kiss had been the symbol of a great and noble passion, fated, in the melancholy manner of nearly every legendary lore, to frustration. He was convinced that the unknown major in the Indian army would never be loved; that the memory of that intense moment on Mr. Willis’s back stairs would haunt his wife for ever, and temper with romance the vistas of an unhappy marriage. The main result of the incident in Edwin’s case was a spate of passionate but imitative verses, a new devotion to such music as repressed his particular portion of weltschmerz, and an anxiety to confide the story, with elaborations, to some sympathetic friend. He turned it on to W.G.