“Of course you must go,” said Roma, brightly. “I don’t mind in the least. I will take Mr Thurston a tremendously long walk, and see if he isn’t much more tired than I when we come home. Men are so conceited about that sort of thing.”
Eugenia laughed. She was leaving the room, but a sudden impulse seemed to come over her. She turned back to the table where Roma was sitting writing, and kissed her gently.
“What is that for?” asked Roma. “Am I particularly good to-day?”
“No, yes. I mean you are always good,” answered Eugenia. “I am very happy to-day, and I always feel as if I should thank you when I feel so.” Roma looked up with a grateful look in her dark eyes. (“It is nice of you to say so, but I don’t deserve it,” she interrupted. “Yes you do,” said Eugenia, and then went on with what she had been speaking about.) “It was something Beauchamp said this morning that made me happy. I needn’t tell you it all, but just a little. He asked me, Roma, if I didn’t think we were getting to be very happy together, and he said, ‘At least, Eugenia, you make me very happy, and I think I am getting to understand you and your ways of thinking about things better. I am learning to see how selfish I was—a while ago, you know. But I trust all that is over.’ Then he said something else, I don’t know what put it into his head—something about baby and how we should bring him up, and the future. Roma,” she broke off, suddenly, “if Beauchamp were to die now I should miss him terribly. I am so glad to feel so, for there was a time when I couldn’t, when my life stretched before me like a long slavery. Don’t think me wicked to speak so—you understand me?”
“Understand you, dear Eugenia? Yes, thoroughly,” said Roma. “And years and years hence I trust and believe you will feel as you say you do now, yet more strongly. I don’t think the sort of happiness you feel is likely to fade or lessen,” she sighed, half unconsciously as she spoke.
Eugenia looked at her affectionately. She seemed on the point of saying something more, but changed her mind and, kissing Roma again, left the room.
How it came about they could neither of them in all probability have exactly related. They went the long walk Miss Eyrecourt had determined upon; they talked of every general subject under the skies, avoiding at first, as if by tacit mutual consent, any of closer personal interest. But after a while, somehow, Mr Thurston came to talking of himself, of his life, his hopes, his disappointments and failures. He was not by any means an egotistical man. Roma could not but feel flattered, by his confidence; she listened with undisguised interest. Suddenly, to her surprise, he alluded to the first time they had met.
“It is curious to look back now to that evening, is it not?” he said. “You were the first lady I had spoken to for, I may say, years. Out there I was completely cut off from any intercourse of the kind. And what a fool (I beg your pardon, Miss Eyrecourt) you must have thought me! Do you remember how I bored you with my confidences? I assure you I never remember our conversation without feeling inclined to blush, only you were so very kind—that part of it,” he added, in a somewhat lower tone, “I don’t want to forget.”
“You need not want to forget any of it,” said Roma, blushing, however, herself as she spoke; “I certainly did not think of you as you imagine. It has always been very pleasant to me to think that—that you thought me, even at first sight, trustworthy—fit to talk to as you did. The only unpleasing part of the remembrance to me is the thought of how it all ended for you, how terribly quickly your dreams faded. Forgive me,” she went on, hastily, “I am afraid I have said too much. I have never alluded to it before.”
“I like your alluding to it,” said Gerald. “I like the feeling that you understand it all. It doesn’t hurt me in the least now. It is wonderful how one grows out of things, isn’t it?—at least, hardly that; how things grow into one till one is no longer conscious of their existence.