If Mr. Wilkins could be changed, thought Rose, why not Frederick?
How wonderful it would be, how too wonderful, if the place worked on
him too and were able to make them even a little understand each other,
even a little be friends. Rose, so far had loosening and
disintegration gone on in her character, now was beginning to think her
obstinate strait-lacedness about his books and her austere absorption
in good works had been foolish and perhaps even wrong. He was her
husband, and she had frightened him away. She had frightened love
away, precious love, and that couldn't be good. Was not Lotty right
when she said the other day that nothing at all except love mattered?
Nothing certainly seemed much use unless it was built up on love. But
once frightened away, could it ever come back? Yes, it might in that
beauty, it might in the atmosphere of happiness Lotty and San Salvatore
seemed between them to spread round like some divine infection.
She had, however, to get him there first, and he certainly
couldn't be got there if she didn't write and tell him where she was.
She would write. She must write; for if she did there was at
least a chance of his coming, and if she didn't there was manifestly
none. And then, once here in this loveliness, with everything so soft
and kind and sweet all round, it would be easier to tell him, to try
and explain, to ask for something different, for at least an attempt at
something different in their lives in the future, instead of the
blankness of separation, the cold--oh, the cold--of nothing at all but
the great windiness of faith, the great bleakness of works.
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