Severn sat down, considering it.
"It takes time," he said.
She looked at him, smiling under lowered brows.
"Time to love me?"
"Time for Anne to love you. She—she's so desperately faithful."
The dressing-bell clanged from the belfry. Robert left them to finish a discussion that he found embarrassing.
"I said I'd try to be a mother to her. I have tried, John; but the little thing won't let me."
"Don't try too hard. Robert's right. Don't—don't be a mother to her."
"What am I to be?"
"Oh, anything you like. A presence. A heavenly apparition. An impossible ideal. Anything but that."