And Eldridge looked at Rosalind. He did not speak to her.... They were going to a new world—and the car was taking them.... Bits of talk—color—drifting fragrance as the coats fell back.... The woman across the aisle had a bunch of violets....
Why had he not thought to get violets for Rosalind! Would she have liked flowers—? She seemed a strange Rosalind, sitting beside him in the car in her grey dress—her eyes like little stars.... They had three children... and a brick house....
The car jolted on. Eldridge would have wished that it might never stop.... There would not be another night like this. He could put out his hand and touch mystery.... Then he was helping her over the crowded street and they were in the hall—with flowers everywhere—and something close about you that touched you when you moved.
For years afterward he looked back to that Symphony with Rosalind. He had come blindly to a door—as blindly as, when a boy, he had walked in the moonlight—and they had gone in together. They were like children in its strangeness. And as children explore a new field, they went forward. It belonged to them—the lights and people, and vibrations everywhere.... They would go till they came to the end—but there would be no end—always hills stretching beyond, and a wood—something deep, mysterious in that wood.... They came to it softly, looking in, and turned back.... Once Rosalind had turned and looked at him.
He held that fast—through the weeks and months that went by, through the dull brick streets, he held it fast—for a moment the hidden Rosalind had come to her window and looked out at him and smiled—before she turned away.
XI
THE next day Gordon Barstow had come to see him. The divorce had dragged on. It had not been contested, but there had been delays and consultations and Eldridge had come to know Gordon Barstow well.