"Well, if I do believe you so far, what did you think?"
Rose let her book lie on her knee and leant over it with her hands clasped. "I thought that perhaps," she faltered, "you had been too long in the habit of doing nothing much, and that you had grown a little lazy—at least, I didn't really think so, but that idea has struck me."
She came and stood by him. "Oh, Edmund, why do you make me say things when I don't want to, when I hate saying them, when they are not really true at all." She was deeply moved, and he felt that in one sense she was in his power. He gave a bitter sigh.
"Can I make you say whatever I like?" Her face flushed and a different look, one of fear he thought, came into her troubled eyes. "Then say after me, 'I am very sorry I did not understand by intuition that you were too blind to shoot the Boers, and that I was so silly as to think for a moment that you had ever wasted your time or been the least little bit lazy.'"
"No, I won't say anything at all"—she held out both hands to him—"except what the children say, 'let us just go on with the game and pretend that that part never happened.'"
And though Rose was still embarrassed, still inclined to fear she had hurt him, what might have been a little cloud was pierced by sunshine. "How ridiculously glad she is that I'm not a coward!" He, too, in spite of annoyance, felt more hopeful than he had been for a long time.
At Genoa they got long delayed letters and papers. In one of these a short paragraph announced the death of Madame Danterre. "It is believed," were the concluding words, "that she has left her large fortune to her daughter, Miss Mary Dexter." That was the first reminder to Rose that the interlude of mere enjoyment was almost over. She was not going to repine; it had been very good. Coming on board after reading this with a quiet patient look, a look habitual to her during the last two years, but which had faded under the sunshine of happy days, Rose saw Edmund Grosse standing alone in the stern of the boat with a number of letters in his left hand pressed against his leg, looking fixedly at the water. The yacht was already standing out to sea, but Edmund had not glanced a farewell at beautiful and yet prosperous Genoa, a city that no modern materialism can degrade. Like a young bride of the sea, she is decked by things old and things new, and her marble palaces do not appear to be insulted by the jostling of modern commerce. All things are kept fresh and pure on that wonderful coast. Something had happened, of that Rose was sure; but what?
Edmund did not look puzzled; he was deciding no knotty question at this moment. Nor did he look simply unhappy: she knew his expression when in sorrow and when in physical pain or mere disgust. He looked intensely preoccupied and very firm. Perhaps, she fancied, he too had a deep sense of that passing of life, of something akin in the swift movement of the water passing the yacht and the swift movement of life passing by the individual man. Was he, perhaps, feeling how life was going for him and for Rose, and by the simple fact of its passing on while they were standing passive their lives would be fixed apart?—passing, apart from what might have been of joy, of peace, of company along the road? There are moments when, even without the stimulus of passion, human beings have a sort of guess at the possibilities of helping one another, of giving strength, and gaining sweetness, that are slipping by. There are many degrees of regret, between that of ships that pass in the night, and that of those who have voyaged long together. There are passages of pleasure sympathy, and passages of sympathy in fight, and passages of mutual succour, and passages of intercourse when incapacity to help has in itself revealed the intensity of good-will in the watcher. But whenever the heart has been fuller than its words, and the will has been deeper than its actions, there is this beauty of regret. There has been a wealth of love greater than could be given or received—not the love of passion, but the love of the little children of the human race for one another. This regret is too grave to belong to comedy, and too happy to belong to tragedy. Rose's heart was full with this sorrow, if it be a real sorrow. These are the sorrows of hearts that are too great for the occasions of life, whereas the pain is far more common of the hearts that are not big enough for what life gives them of opportunity.
Rose was oppressed by feelings she could not analyse, a sense of possibilities of what might have been after these perfect weeks together. But her feelings were dreamy; she had no sense of concrete alternative; she did not now—he had been too skilful—expect Edmund to ask her, nor did she wish him to ask her, to draw quite close to him. She only felt at the end of this interlude they had spent together a suspicion of the infinite reach of the soul, and the soul not rebelling against its bonds, but conscious of them while awaiting freedom.
"Only I discern infinite passion and the pain