He came up to the fire.
“And so you were looking at him, our Messenger with winged sandals. Oh, Rosamund, how wonderful it was at Olympia! I wonder whether you and I shall ever see the Hermes together again. I suppose all the chances are against it.”
“I hope we shall.”
“Do you? And yet—I don’t know. It would be terrible to see him together again—if things were much altered; if, for instance, one was less happy and remembered——”
He broke off, came to the settee at right angles to the fire on which she was sitting, and sat down beside her. At this moment—he did not know why—the great and always growing love he had for her seemed to surge forward abruptly like a tidal wave, and he was conscious of sadness and almost of fear. He looked at Rosamund as if he were just going to part from her, anxiously, and with a sort of greed of detail.
“Alone I would never go back to Elis,” he said. “Never. What a power things have if they are connected in our hearts with people. It’s—it’s awful.”
A clock chimed faintly.
“I must go.”
He got up and stood for a moment looking down at the dear head loved so much, at her brow.
“I don’t know why it is,” he said, “but this evening I hate leaving you.”