"What can such
people be made of?"
"Same stuff as parsons are made of."
"Nonsense!"
"Quite right. It is nonsense."
"Now you get up off the cold floor, or you'll be starting
rheumatism next, and you stop laughing and being so silly."
"Why shouldn't I laugh?" he asked, pinning her with his elbows,
and advancing his face to hers. "What's there to cry at? Kiss me
here." He indicated the spot where a kiss would be welcome.
He was a boy after all. When it came to the point, it was she who
remembered the past, she into whose soul the iron had entered,
she who knew whose room this had been last year. It endeared him
to her strangely that he should be sometimes wrong.
"Any letters?" he asked.
"Just a line from Freddy."
"Now kiss me here; then here."
Then, threatened again with rheumatism, he strolled to the
window, opened it (as the English will), and leant out. There was
the parapet, there the river, there to the left the beginnings of
the hills. The cab-driver, who at once saluted him with the hiss
of a serpent, might be that very Phaethon who had set this
happiness in motion twelve months ago.
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