“That’s my great, too great reward,” he said soberly, almost with a touch of deep awe. Then, reddening and looking away, he added, “You were the very first.”
“Was I?”
“Yes, but—but you mustn’t think that it was a religious feeling, anything of that kind, which kept me back from—from certain things. It was more the desire to be strong, healthy, to have the sane mind in the sane body, I think. I was mad about athletics, all that sort of thing. Anyhow, you know now. You were the first. You will be the only one in my life.”
There was a long silence between them. Then Rosamund said, with a change of manner to practical briskness:
“If Beattie ever should marry, I could take a maid about with me.”
“Yes. An hotel in Liverpool with a maid! In Blackpool, in Huddersfield, in Wolverhampton, in Glasgow, when there’s a heavy thaw on, with a maid! Oh, how delightful it will be! Manchester on a wet day in early spring with a—”
“Hush!” she put one hand on his lips gently, and looked at him with a sort of smiling challenge in her eyes. “Do you mean to forbid me?”
“I don’t think I could ever forbid you to do anything.”
“We shall see in England.”
“But, Rosamund”—there was no one in sight, and he slipped one arm round her—“if something came to fill your life, both our lives, to the brim?”