“No, I have found you out as a kind, brave gentleman.”
“Something happened to us in the market-place at Moscow!” said Bertram.
“It was God’s hand that turned your head my way and let me look into your eyes.”
“It was luck,” he said. “God, if you like!”
“Love, anyhow,” she answered.
He stood looking into her eyes, and his were thoughtful.
“My love,” he said, “is not a boy’s first flame of passion, body and soul on fire. That was given to my wife, Joyce. In a way it’s hers now, because it belongs to the past which was hers and mine. I shall come to you in a different way, Princess. Not as an ardent boy, but as a man who’s seen the brutality of life, and come through agony, and perhaps has a better understanding of himself and of human nature. But what love I have in my heart, and a comradeship of utter loyalty, devotion, and humility, shall be yours until I die, if you’ll let me live with you so long.”
“We shall arrange our life together,” she said, using the words he had spoken. “Our loving comradeship has no ignorance. We have both seen life’s misery and been touched by it. We shall have the wisdom of love, so that it is more precious.”
LIX
The boat was the last to leave Kazan to go down the Volga. There was already ice in the river, and the wooden piers were being pulled in. The Russian skipper was anxious to get back on the return journey, lest the boat should be ice-bound.