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. Her
miserable face--whatever her principles did for her they didn't make
her happy--her little miserable face, twisted with effort to be
patient, had been at last more than he could bear to see, and he had
kept away as much as he could. She never ought to have been the
daughter of a low-church rector--narrow devil; she was quite unfitted
to stand up against such an upbringing.

What had happened, why she was here, why she was his Rose again,
passed his comprehension; and meanwhile, and until such time as he
understood, he still could kiss. In fact he could not stop kissing;
and it was he now who began to murmur, to say love things in her ear
under the hair that smelt so sweet and tickled him just as he
remembered it used to tickle him.

And as he held her close to his heart and her arms were soft
round his neck, he felt stealing over him a delicious sense of--at
first he didn't know what it was, this delicate, pervading warmth, and
then he recognized it as security. Yes; security. No need now to be
ashamed of his figure, and to make jokes about it so as to forestall
other people's and show he didn't mind it; no need now to be ashamed of
getting