If Mr. Wilkins could be changed, thought Rose, why not Frederick?  How wonderful it would be, how too wonderful, if the place worked on him too and were able to make them even a little understand each other, even a little be friends.  Rose, so far had loosening and disintegration gone on in her character, now was beginning to think her obstinate strait-lacedness about his books and her austere absorption in good works had been foolish and perhaps even wrong.  He was her husband, and she had frightened him away.  She had frightened love away, precious love, and that couldn’t be good.  Was not Lotty right when she said the other day that nothing at all except love mattered?  Nothing certainly seemed much use unless it was built up on love.  But once frightened away, could it ever come back?  Yes, it might in that beauty, it might in the atmosphere of happiness Lotty and San Salvatore seemed between them to spread round like some divine infection.

She had, however, to get him there first, and he certainly couldn’t be got there if she didn’t write and tell him where she was.

She would write.  She must write; for if she did there was at least a chance of his coming, and if she didn’t there was manifestly none.  And then, once here in this loveliness, with everything so soft and kind and sweet all round, it would be easier to tell him, to try and explain, to ask for something different, for at least an attempt at something different in their lives in the future, instead of the blankness of separation, the cold—­oh, the cold—­of nothing at all but the great windiness of faith, the great bleakness of works.  Why, one person in the world, one single person belonging to one, of one’s very own, to talk to, to take care of, to love, to be interested in, was worth more than all the speeches on platforms and the compliments of chairmen in the world.  It was also worth more—­Rose couldn’t help it, the thought would come—­than all the prayers.

These thoughts were not head thoughts, like Scrap’s, who was altogether free from yearnings, but bosom thoughts.  They lodged in the bosom; it was in the bosom that Rose ached, and felt so dreadfully lonely.  And when her courage failed her, as it did on most days, and it seemed impossible to write to Frederick, she would look at Mr. Wilkins and revive.

There he was, a changed man.  There he was, going into that small, uncomfortable room every night, that room whose proximities had been Lotty’s only misgiving, and coming out of it in the morning, and Lotty coming out of it too, both of them as unclouded and as nice to each other as when they went in.  And hadn’t he, so critical at home, Lotty had told her, of the least thing going wrong, emerged from the bath catastrophe as untouched in spirit as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were untouched in body when they emerged from the fire?  Miracles were happening in this place.  If they could happen to Mr. Wilkins, why not to Frederick?