Not only was his wife here
--here, of all places in the world--but she was clinging to him as she
had not clung for years, and murmuring love, and welcoming him. If she
welcomed him she must have been expecting him. Strange as this was, it
was the only thing in the situation which was evident--that, and the
softness of her cheek against his, and the long-forgotten sweet smell
of her.
Frederick was bewildered. But not being the man to hurt anything
if he could help it he too put his arms round her, and having put them
round her he also kissed her; and presently he was kissing her almost
as tenderly as she was kissing him; and presently he was kissing her
quite as tenderly; and again presently he was kissing her more
tenderly, and just as if he had never left off.
He was bewildered, but he still could kiss. It seemed curiously
natural to be doing it. It made him feel as if he were thirty again
instead of forty, and Rose were his Rose of twenty, the Rose he had so
much adored before she began to weigh what he did with her idea of
right, and the balance went against him, and she had turned strange,
and stony, and more and more shocked, and oh, so lamentable. He
couldn't get at her in those days at all; she wouldn't, she couldn't
understand. She kept on referring everything to what she called God's
eyes--in God's eyes it couldn't be right, it wasn't right.
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