“No. I suppose not. Of course not,” he answered, rather puzzled, still thinking of Stukeley.
“And you wouldn’t say that the really beautiful things, such as love is, say, to a woman like myself. No vileness gathers about that?”
“N-no,” he answered, with some hesitation, wishing that he had never started his mild little rabbit of an epigram. He looked away, at the sky-line, for a moment. Then, with sudden desperation, he charged her to change the subject, his face still red from his former rout.
“Olivia,” he said. “If I drew you a ship, would you embroider it, or make a mat of it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Draw the Broken Heart. I could work it for Tom’s birthday. I should be very glad of it, after I’ve finished this.”
Perrin helped her to cut a square of canvas from a little roll she had obtained from the sailmaker. He settled himself down to draw. Olivia stitched with her silks.
“It is so curious,” she said at last, “that you should have known my husband—that you knew him years ago, when we stayed at Eltons together. Before I knew him.”
“Yes. I’ve thought that, too. And now we’re all here together. And Eltons is still going on, behind us there. Rooks in the elms. And your aunt Pile in her chair.”
She seemed to reflect for a moment, as though thinking of the beautiful house, where life moved so nobly, like a strain of music. Perrin knew that she was thinking of Stukeley. “Oh, you women,” he said to himself. “You give everything for a pennyweight of love, and even that is never paid to you.” He would have given much, poor moth, to be back at Eltons, young and handsome, with the shy, gauche girl who had since become Olivia. “I didn’t know then,” he said to himself, “and you couldn’t guess. And now we’re driving to it. Shipwreck. Shipwreck. And I should have been so happy with you.”
“What was Tom like then?” said Olivia.