He was startled.
"But what was there to keep you out of England now?"
"Nothing, only you. I always told myself that I never would come back unless you wrote and said you wished me to."
He was silent for a second, oddly silent. It was with an effort that he seemed to speak.
"You take my breath away."
"Do I?" she laughed. "Ronald, instead of being eighteen years, it does not seem to me as if it were eighteen days since we were parted." Not eighteen days! It seemed to him as if it had been eighteen hundred years and more. "I want to tell you all about it. I always said to myself that I would tell you all about it the very first time I saw you, if I had to tell you on my bended knees."
"What is there to tell?"
"What is there not to tell! Now sit down and listen."
He had to sit beside her on a couch, and he had to listen. He did not know how to help it. He would have given something to have known. He felt that between himself and this woman there was a great gulf fixed. While she--she seemed to be so happy in his presence as to be unconscious that anything was wrong. She seemed to be unconscious that there was a single jarring note which marred the perfect harmony.
"Ronald, do you remember Major Pettifer?"