“Truly now,” Rosamund continued, “doesn’t hearing that make you a bit thirsty again for your little starlit spring? It is not too late. I am sure that if you were to go back to her, she would let you drink all you want.... I happen to know that she isn’t married yet?”
Sid sat dumb under the raillery, with set, gloomy face. Turning over a page or two, Rosamund began again.
“Here is one of my favourites,” she said, ignoring Sid’s silence. “It is to Meriel:
Was there a moon in the sky,
Was there a wind in the tree,
I only remember that you and I
Sat somewhere with you and me.
I only remember the joy—the joy—
And the ache of going away:
O little girl, here’s a little boy
Will love you till Judgment Day.”
As she finished reading this, Rosamund let the book close in her lap, and her mood seemed suddenly to have changed to a thoughtful seriousness. She repeated, as if to herself, the last two lines.
“O little girl, here’s a little boy
Will love you till Judgment Day—”
she said over slowly, as though weighing every word; and there was something in her voice that might have suggested that in playfully pressing this thorn into Sid’s side, she had unexpectedly pricked herself. Sid sat on in the same attitude of patient gloom. Presently, observing her silence, he turned to her.
“Are you finished?” he said.