“What is the motto, Harry, of your house?” she queried, irrelevantly. “I've forgotten.”
“It once was,” Pontycroft said, and he smiled at her: “Super mare, super fluvia.”
“Once?” said Ruth, a little shyly, “once? And now?”
“Constantia, now, henceforth,” he whispered with a throbbing of the heart.... “But will your uncle be pleased at all this?” he enquired.
“My uncle?” said Ruth, waking from a reverie. “Oh—he would have liked me to marry Rutherford, I imagine. But if you're awfully nice to him, and if you let him see how infatuated you are with Barracks Hill—he'll end, I know, by giving me and you his blessing. But I won't give up England—and I want Italy, too,—Venice, Rome!” wilfully persisted Ruth.
“You precious little piece of covetous cosmopolitanism! Haven't you learned that if in Heaven, may be, it is given us to be everywhere—in this life: One Paradise, one Eden? In this world one Eden shall suffice, for things learned on earth may or may not be practised in Heaven; but love is, ever was, the language of repetition. In this life the lesson is to be contented with a single Paradise.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Miss Adgate, laying her hand on Ponty's mouth. “Oh, middle-aged sentiment... not in the Catechism. Don't, I beg, say it again!”
He seized the hand, he pressed his lips to it, he pressed it against his breast.
“Even an infant like you,” he whispered, “let alone a world-worn chap like the man you propose to take as a husband, can't stand perpetual motion.”
“Very well,” Ruth compromised, “shall we alternate with a year in England, one here, one in Italy, Jobias and Paolina to pack for us. That will make it easy.”