“I feel such a beast, April, such a beast. All the day I have been cursing myself and wondering what on earth possessed me. I don’t know what it was. But all the time I’ve been away I’ve been so looking forward to seeing you again. When I was all alone and unhappy I said to myself: ‘Never mind, April’s waiting,’ and I thought how wonderful to see you again, and then---- Oh, I don’t know, but when I came here last night and found your mother here--I don’t know! All the time I was dying to speak to you, and she would go on talking, and I got more and more annoyed. And then, I don’t know how it happened, but I found myself getting angry with you because of your mother.”
“But you mustn’t, Roland, really you mustn’t. You shouldn’t speak of mother like that; you know how good she’s been to us.”
“Oh, yes, I know it, of course I do. But can’t you see what it was like last night for me coming back to you, and wanting you, and then to hear only your mother; and by the time she left us alone I had got so bad tempered that----”
And he had begun to pour out a further torrent of explanation when he saw that a sly, mischievous smile was playing round the corners of her mouth and that she was no longer angry.
“Oh, but you have, haven’t you? I know you have.”
She began to remonstrate, to say that she had not forgiven him, that he had been most unkind to her, but she made no resistance when his hand slipped slowly round her neck and turned her face to his. And as he raised it, she pouted ever so slightly her lips toward those that sank to meet them. As their mouths met she passed one hand behind his head and pressed it down to her. It was a long embrace, and when she drew back from it, the luster of her eyes had grown dimmed and misty.
“You’ve never kissed me like that before,” she said.
“Perhaps I’ve never really loved you before.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m silly, but if you only love me now, then before--oh, it doesn’t matter, you love me now, don’t you?”
And he answered her in the only possible way.
One hour they had together, an hour of rich enchantment. The blinds were drawn, the lamp unlighted; she sat on the floor with the firelight playing over her, leaned back against him while he told her of Bruges and its waterways, the proud boulevards of Brussels, the great cathedral at Köln, the noble sweep of the Rhine and the hills on either side of it. She followed little of what he said to her; it was enough for her, after three long months, to be soothed by his presence, to hear his voice, to hold his hand in hers, and to feel from time to time his breath grow warm upon her neck and cheek as he bent to kiss her. It was the tenderest hour their love had brought to them.