Of finite hearts that yearn."
Such were the moments when a man might be pardoned if he called Rose's beauty angelic—angelic of the type of Perugino's pictured angels, a figure just treading on the earth enough to keep up appearances, but whose very skirts float buoyantly in the fresh atmosphere of eternity. They stood a few paces apart, Rose with her look bent vaguely towards the shore, Edmund, still reading his letters, apparently unaware of her presence. He was thus able to take a long exposure sun-picture of the white figure on a sensitive memory that would prove but too retentive of the impression.
But he had to speak at last. "Is it you?"
Edmund thought he spoke as usual, but there was a depth of pain and of tenderness revealed in the face that usually betrayed so little. He held out his hand unconsciously and then drew it back half closed, and looked again at the flowing water. It was a moment of temptation, when love was fighting against itself. Then, with the same half movement of the hand towards her:
"I have had a bolt from the blue, Rose. That man, Hewitt, whom I trusted as I would myself, has absconded. It is thought he has been playing wildly with my money, and that this crisis in South America has been the last blow. I shan't know yet if I am ruined completely or not."
"Oh, Edmund, how dreadful!"
"Don't pity me, dear, it's not worth while. It only means that one of the unemployed will get to work at last. That is, if he can find a job. But I must hurry home at once and leave you to follow. If I put back into Genoa now I can leave by the night express. And you and your mother had better go on to Marseilles in the yacht after you have dropped me."