'What care I Time will—'
something, what is it?—
'The throes that rend my heart to-day?'
Well, I'll try, but I'm sure I sha'n't be able to. I haven't heard it for years."
Then she sat down, and began it; and he shut his eyes and tried to think he was seventeen and she was twenty.
The music stopped short. "I knew it would be a failure! It's gone. It was too long ago," she repeated.
"It was yesterday!" he cried, and caught her in his arms as she got up.
For a second she held him back from her, regarding him curiously. Regret, tenderness, irony were mingled in the gaze she bent on him. Like him she mourned for what had perished; like him she sought to delude herself that it bloomed anew.... "It's absurd," she said, and drooped to him with a kiss.
As they moved apart, both were disappointed. The man thought, "I have spoilt my memory of her kiss to me in Rouen."
"I adore you," he said mechanically.