Then, as they turned back to the lighted outer room, "I thought I was to have had Tiedeman's flat?"
"Well, he's up another flight of stairs and the rain makes a row on the skylight. It was simpler to take his and give you mine. I want you to have mine."
II.
She turned off the electric light and shut her eyes and lay thinking. The violent motion of the express prolonged itself in a ghostly vibration, rocking the bed. In still space, unshaken by this tremor, she could see the other rooms, the quiet, beautiful rooms.
I wonder how Mamma and Dorsy are getting on…. I'm not going to think about Mamma. It isn't fair to Richard. I shan't think about anybody but Richard for this fortnight. One evening of it's gone already. It might have lasted quite another hour if he hadn't got up and gone away so suddenly. What a fool I was to let him think I was tired.
There will be thirteen evenings more. Thirteen. You can stretch time out by doing a lot of things in it; doing something different every hour. When you're with Richard every minute's different from the last, and he brings you the next all bright and new.
Heaven would be like that. Imagine an eternity of heaven; being with Richard for ever and ever. But nobody ever did imagine an eternity of heaven. People only talk about it because they can't imagine it. What they mean is that if they had one minute of it they would remember that for ever and ever.
* * * * *
This is Richard's life. This is what I'd have taken from him if I'd let him marry me.
I daren't even think what it would have been like if I'd tried to mix up Mamma and Richard in the same house…. And poor little Mamma in a strange place with nothing about it that she could remember, going up and down in it, trying to get at me, and looking reproachful and disapproving all the time. She'd have to be shut in her own rooms because Richard wouldn't have her in his. Sitting up waiting to be read aloud to and played halma with when Richard wanted me. Saying the same things over and over again. Sighing.