Renée sighed. “We shall have to live longer than I look for...” she stopped. “Why do you ask me why not? He is fond of us both, and sorry for us; but have you forgotten Roland that morning on the Adriatic?”
Beauchamp pressed her hand. The stroke of Then and Now rang in his breast like a bell instead of a bounding heart. Something had stunned his heart. He had no clear central feeling; he tried to gather it from her touch, from his joy in beholding her and sitting with her alone, from the grace of her figure, the wild sweetness of her eyes, and the beloved foreign lips bewitching him with their exquisite French and perfection of speech.
His nature was too prompt in responding to such a call on it for resolute warmth.
“If I had been firmer then, or you one year older!” he said.
“That girl in Venice had no courage,” said Renée.
She raised her head and looked about the room.
Her instinct of love sounded her lover through, and felt the deficiency or the contrariety in him, as surely as musical ears are pained by a discord that they require no touchstone to detect. Passion has the sensitiveness of fever, and is as cruelly chilled by a tepid air.
“Yes, a London house after Venice and Normandy!” said Beauchamp, following her look.
“Sicily: do not omit Syracuse; you were in your naval uniform: Normandy was our third meeting,” said Renée. “This is the fourth. I should have reckoned that.”
“Why? Superstitiously?”