There was a stone seat there, which he remembered. It was underneath a grass bank with a little hollowed place in which stood a statue of “Notre Dame de Lourdes,”—painted blue and white, amidst tall growing ferns. He had once stood there talking to Yvonne de Plumoison with a group of officers. Joyce was alone. Her hat lay on the seat by her side. She had a book on her lap, but she wasn’t reading. She was weeping. At least there were tears in her eyes when, at the sound of his footsteps on the path, she looked quickly towards him, and then sprang up with a cry of surprise.
He called her name, and went forward hurriedly, with tremendous gladness in his eyes. She looked as he had thought of her so often. As she stood there, waiting for him, the sunlight, shining through young leaves, touched her hair, giving it a glory. She wore a green frock, cut low at the neck, and looked like the Rosalind in Arden Woods.
She let him take her hands and kiss her, but did not answer his passion with any warmth of greeting, so that almost in a moment he was chilled, and saw that she had become pale in his arms.
“Here’s a seat,” she said. “Let’s sit and talk.”
He sat beside her, holding her hand, and was struck by its coldness.
“I’ve been longing for you,” he told her. “Dreaming of you o’ nights.”
She said something about his letters. They didn’t suggest any passionate longing, she thought. He hadn’t bothered to join her in Paris when she asked him.
He asked her to “wash all that out.” He’d been a blithering idiot. It had all been a question of jangled nerves—the wrong perspective—egotism. He’d been thinking things out during his loneliness. He’d killed his miserable ego. All he wanted now was to make her happy and to serve her. They’d made a mistake in taking things too seriously, arguing about trivialities as though they mattered. They’d allowed “politics” to strain their relations! It was inconceivable, looking back on it. What kids they’d been! He had grown up at last. No more of that sort of nonsense. Tolerance was his watch-word. He’d come to understand that a plain getting on with life mattered more than theories and minor differences in points of view. Love was the only thing worth while.
“Do you mean that?” asked Joyce. “Do you think, honestly, that love over-rides everything?”
“Every damn thing,” said Bertram.