He
couldn't let her go either.
"Oh--the very instant then," murmured Rose.
This was cryptic, but Frederick said, "Yes, the very instant,"
and kissed her neck.
"How quickly my letter got to you," murmured Rose, whose eyes
were shut in the excess of her happiness.
"Didn't it," said Frederick, who felt like shutting his eyes
himself.
So there had been a letter. Soon, no doubt, light would be
vouchsafed him, and meanwhile this was so strangely, touchingly sweet,
this holding his Rose to his heart again after all the years, that he
couldn't bother to try to guess anything. Oh, he had been happy during
these years, because it was not in him to be unhappy; besides, how many
interests life had had to offer him, how many friends, how much
success, how many women only too willing to help him to blot out the
thought of the altered, petrified, pitiful little wife at home who
wouldn't spend his money, who was appalled by his books, who drifted
away and away from him, and always if he tried to have it out with her
asked him with patient obstinacy what he thought the things he wrote
and lived by looked in the eyes of God. "No one," she said once,
"should ever write a book God wouldn't like to read. That is the test,
Frederick." And he had laughed hysterically, burst into a great shriek
of laughter, and rushed out of the house, away from her solemn little
face--away from her pathetic, solemn little face.
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