the clear light of April at
San Salvatore, suddenly saw the truth--bored him.

Naturally when she saw this, when that morning it flashed upon
her for the first time, she did not like it; she liked it so little
that for a space the whole beauty of Italy was blotted out. What was
to be done about it? She could not give up believing in good and not
liking evil, and it must be evil to live entirely on the proceeds of
adulteries, however dead and distinguished they were. Besides, if she
did, if she sacrificed her whole past, her bringing up, her work for
the last ten years, would she bore him less? Rose felt right down at
her very roots that if you have once thoroughly bored somebody it is
next to impossible to unbore him. Once a bore always a bore--
certainly, she thought, to the person originally bored.

Then, thought she, looking out to sea through eyes grown misty,
better cling to her religion. It was better--she hardly noticed the
reprehensibleness of her thought--than nothing. But oh, she wanted to
cling to something tangible, to love something living, something that
one could hold against one's heart, that one could see and touch and do
things for. If her poor baby hadn't died . . . babies didn't get bored
with one, it took them a long while to grow up and find one out. And
perhaps one's baby never did find one out; perhaps one would always be
to it, however old and bearded it grew, somebody special, somebody
different from every one else, and if for no other reason, precious in
that one could never be repeated.

Sitting with dim eyes looking out to sea she felt an
extraordinary yearning to hold something of her very own tight to her
bosom. Rose was slender, and as reserved in figure as in character,
yet she felt a queer sensation of--how could she describe it?--bosom.
There was something about San Salvatore that made her feel all bosom.
She wanted to gather to her bosom, to comfort and protect, soothing the
dear head that should lie on it with softest strokings and murmurs of
love. Frederick, Frederick's child--come to her, pillowed on her,
because they were unhappy, because they had been hurt. . . They would
need her then, if they had been hurt; they would let themselves be
loved then, if they were unhappy.

Well, the child was gone, would never come now; but perhaps
Frederick--some day--when he was old and tired . . .

Such were Mrs. Arbuthnot's reflections and emotions that first
day at San Salvat