What had happened, why she was here, why she was his Rose again, passed his comprehension; and meanwhile, and until such time as he understood, he still could kiss.  In fact he could not stop kissing; and it was he now who began to murmur, to say love things in her ear under the hair that smelt so sweet and tickled him just as he remembered it used to tickle him.

And as he held her close to his heart and her arms were soft round his neck, he felt stealing over him a delicious sense of—­at first he didn’t know what it was, this delicate, pervading warmth, and then he recognized it as security.  Yes; security.  No need now to be ashamed of his figure, and to make jokes about it so as to forestall other people’s and show he didn’t mind it; no need now to be ashamed of getting 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.