“But Nelly loves her children and they love her!” Marise brought this out abruptly, impulsively, and felt, as she heard the words, that they had a flat, naive sound, out of key with the general color of this talk, like a C Major chord introduced into Debussy nuances.

“Not much she doesn’t, nor they her.  Any honest observer of life knows that the only sincere relation possible between the young and the old (after the babies are weaned) is hostility.  We hated our elders, because they got in our way.  And they’ll hate us as soon as they get the strength to, because we’ll be in their way.  And we will hate them because they will want to push us off the scene.  It’s impossible to ignore the gulf.  Most human tragedies come from trying to pretend it’s not there.”

“Why, Mr. Welles,” cried Marise again, “what do you say to such talk?  Don’t you find him perfectly preposterous?”

Mr. Welles answered a little absently.  “Oh, I’m pretty well used to him, by now.  And all his friends in the city are talking like that now.  It’s the fashion.  I’m so old that I’ve seen a good many fashions in talk come and go.  I never could see that people acted any differently, no matter which way they talk.”  As he finished, he drew a long sigh, which had obviously no connection with what he had been saying.  With the sigh, came an emanation from him of dispirited fatigue.  Marise wished she dared draw his hand upon her arm and ask him to lean on her as they walked.

Nothing more was said for a time.  Marise lost herself in the outdoor wideness of impression that always came to her under a night sky, where she felt infinity hovering near.  She was aware of nothing but the faint voice of the pines, the distant diminuendo of the frog’s song, the firm elastic quality of the ground under her feet, so different from the iron rigidity of the winter earth, and the cool soft pressure of the night-air on her cheeks, when, like something thrust into her mind from the outside, there rose into her consciousness, articulate and complete, the reason why she had shrunk from looking at the photograph of Rocca di Papa.  It was because it was painful to her, intimately painful and humiliating to remember how she and Neale had felt there, the wild, high things they had said to each other, that astounding flood of feeling which had swept them away at the last.  What had become of all that?  Where now was that high tide?

* * * * *

Of course she loved Neale, and he loved her; there was nobody like Neale, yes, all that; but oh! the living flood had been ebbing, ebbing out of their hearts.  They were not alive as they had been alive when they had clung to each other, there on that age-old rock, and felt the tide of all the ages lift them high.