“But you must mind; if not for your own sake ...”
He stopped. She knew he was thinking of her boys; she shrugged her shoulders.
“And now, why is it not good for you?”
“A man must not be happy too often.”
“What a sophism! Why not?”
“I don’t know; but I feel I am right. It spoils him; it is too much for him.”
“Are you happy here, then?”
He smiled and gently nodded yes.
They were silent for very long. They were now sitting at the end of the garden, on a seat which stood in a semicircle of flowering rhododendrons: the great purple-satin blossoms shut them in with a tall hedge of closely-clustered bouquets, rising from the paths and overtopping their heads; standard roses flung their incense before them. They sat still, happy in each other, happy in the sympathy of their atmospheres mingling together; yet in their happiness there was the invincible melancholy which is an integral part of all life, even in happiness.
“I don’t know how I am to tell you,” he said. “But suppose that I were to see you every day, every moment that I thought of you.... That would not do. For then I should become so refined, so subtle, that for pure happiness I should not be able to live; my other being would receive nothing and would suffer like a beast that is left to starve. I am bad, I am selfish, to be able to speak like this, but I must tell you the truth, that you may not think too well of me. And so I only seek your company as something very beautiful which I allow myself to enjoy just once in a way.”