Her thoughts wouldn’t go on.  Her mind stammered.  She couldn’t think.  She could only see and feel.  She didn’t know how it had happened.  It was a miracle.  God could do miracles.  God had done this one.  God could—­God could—­could—­

Her mind stammered again, and broke off.

“Frederick—­” she tried to say; but no sound came, or if it did the crackling of the fire covered it up.

She must go nearer.  She began to creep towards him—­softly, softly.

He did not move.  He had not heard.

She stole nearer and nearer, and the fire crackled and he heard nothing.

She stopped a moment, unable to breathe.  She was afraid. 
Suppose he—­suppose he—­oh, but he had come, he had come.

She went on again, close up to him, and her heart beat so loud that she thought he must hear it.  And couldn’t he feel—­didn’t he know—­

“Frederick,” she whispered, hardly able even to whisper, choked by the beating of her heart.

He spun round on his heels.

“Rose!” he exclaimed, staring blankly.

But she did not see his stare, for her arms were round his neck, and her cheek was against his, and she was murmuring, her lips on his ear, “I knew you would come—­in my very heart I always, always knew you would come—­”

Chapter 21

Now Frederick was not the man to hurt anything if he could help it; besides, he was completely bewildered.  Not only was his wife here —­here, of all places in the world—­but she was clinging to him as 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.