“What's the good of anything being exquisite when you feel mouldy?”
“It may help to charm away the mouldiness. Beauty is eternal and mouldiness only temporal. The sun will go on shining and the sea will go on changing colour long after our pains and joys have vanished from the world. Nature is pitilessly indifferent to human emotion.”
“If so,” she said, her intuition finding the weakness of my slipshod argument, “how can it touch human mouldiness?”
“I don't know,” said I. “The poets will tell you. All you have to do is to lie on the breast of the Great Mother and your heartache will go from you. I've never tried it myself, as I've never been afflicted with heartache.”
“Is that true?” she asked, womanlike catching at the personal.
I smiled and nodded.
“I'm glad on your account,” she said sincerely. “It's the very devil of an ache. I've always had it.”
“Poor Lola,” said I, prompted by my acquired instinct of eumoiriety. “I wish I could cure you.”
“You?” She gave a short little laugh and then turned her head away.
“I had a very comfortable crossing,” she remarked a moment later.