Certainly she could not object to him to-day on the score of youth and freshness. His hair had lost its brightness. His face was very brown and thin and the lines if not deep were visible even in the candle light. His nose and mouth had the hard determination that life, more especially life in war time, develops; it was no casual trick of Nature with him. His eyes were still the same bright golden hazel, but their expression was keen and alert, and commanding. She fancied they could look as hard as those features more susceptible to modeling.
IV
"Smoke if you like."
"Thanks. I don't want to smoke."
Finally when Alexina was gripping the arms of the chair he began to speak.
"I feel rather an ass. I hardly know how to begin. I'm no longer twenty-three. I've lived several lifetimes since this war began, and made up my mind twice that I was going out. I should feel ninety. Somehow I don't feel vastly different from that day when I grabbed you like a brute because I wanted you more than anything on earth….
"I don't pretend that I've thought of you ever since. I've forgotten you for years at a time. But there have been moments when you have simply projected yourself into me and been closer than any mortal has ever been. You were there!
"I felt there was some meaning in those sudden secret wonderful visits of your soul to mine—I hate to say what sounds like sentimental rotting, but that exactly expresses it. They belonged to some other plane of consciousness. It takes war to shift a man over the border if only for a moment. It kept me—lately—from … never mind that now. When I saw your eyes above that tiny yellow flame … it wasn't only that your eyes are not to be matched anywhere … it seemed to me that I saw myself in them, They came as dose as that! Laugh if you like."
He stood defiantly in front of her.
"God! You look as if you never had had an emotion, never could have one. But you had once, if only for a moment!"