"I don't care where we come to, my dear, as long as we get to a place where we can talk in peace. I've a great deal to hear, you know."
She turned to study him. He was so familiar and yet such a complete stranger. His voice was the same rather eager, imperative thing that she remembered, and she thought that his eyes had not changed at all. But for the rest he was bigger, astonishingly so; his shoulders, his face, the whole of him, seemed overpoweringly large this morning. And he looked old. In the bright light she could see that his face was deeply lined, and that little pouches had formed under his eyes. But it struck her that she had never seen a more utterly kind expression; it was a charming age that had come upon Richard, an age full of sympathy and tolerance. They passed the Convent of the Poor Clares with its white walls inset with Della Robbia plaques of the Innocents in their swaddling clothes. Richard glanced at them and smiled.
"I rather love them, don't you, Joan? They're a kind of symbol of the childhood of the world."
She followed the direction of his eyes, but the plaques did not strike her as being very interesting. Perhaps he missed some response in her, for he fell silent.
When they reached the Valley of the Rocks he stood still and looked about him. "I had no idea there was anything as beautiful as this in England," he said.
She nodded. She too had always thought this valley very lovely, but because of its loveliness it depressed her, filling her with strange regrets. They sat down on a wide boulder. Somewhere to their right the sea was talking to itself on the pebbles; on a high pinnacle of grey rock some white goats leapt and gambolled. Joan looked at the deep blue of the sky showing between the crags, and then at Richard.
His chin was resting on his hands, which were clasped over his stick, and she noticed the hard, strong line of his jaw, and the roughened texture of his neck.
Presently he turned to her. "Well, aren't you going to tell me?" he asked.
"There's nothing to tell," she said uneasily.
He laughed. "What, in twenty years, has nothing happened?"