hot going up hills, or to torment himself with pictures of how
he probably appeared to beautiful young women--how middle-aged, how
absurd in his inability to keep away from them. Rose cared nothing for
such things. With her he was safe. To her he was her lover, as he
used to be; and she would never notice or mind any of the ignoble
changes that getting older had made in him and would go on making more
and more.

Frederick continued, therefore, with greater and greater warmth
and growing delight to kiss his wife, and the mere holding of her in
his arms caused him to forget everything else. How could he, for
instance, remember or think of Lady Caroline, to mention only one of
the complications with which his situation bristled, when here was his
sweet wife, miraculously restored to him, whispering with her cheek
against his in the dearest, most romantic words how much she loved him,
how terribly she had missed him? He did for one brief instant, for
even in moments of love there were brief instants of lucid thought,
recognize the immense power of the woman present and being actually
held compared to that of the woman, however beautiful, who is somewhere
else, but that is as far as he got towards remembering Scrap; no
farther. She was like a dream, fleeing before the morning light.

"When did you start?" murmured Rose, her mouth on his ear. She
couldn't let him go; not even to talk she couldn't let him go.

"Yesterday morning," murmured Frederick, holding her close. 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