"
"Blessed little bit of shell that found a temporary shelter in my arm!"
he exclaimed. "All the same, I feel just as you do. Out there, for all
your graciousness, you were something sacred, something far away."
"And here?" she whispered.
"Shall I tell you?" he asked, with a sudden fire in his eyes.
"For heaven's sake, no!" she begged, thrusting out her hands. "I'm afraid
to think--afraid of actual thoughts. Don't let us give form to anything.
Let me be content to just feel this new warmth in my life."
She leaned back in her chair with a contented sigh. A little tug came
snorting up the river. Even the roar of the traffic over Waterloo Bridge
seemed muffled and disintegrated by the breeze which swept on its way
through the rustling lime trees.
"You are wonderfully situated here," she went on. "I don't believe it
is London at all. It rests me more than any place I have been in for
a long time, and yet--at the same time--I think that it is going to
make me sad."
"Sad? But why?" he asked anxiously.
"Because it seems like one of the stopping places--where one steps off
to think, you know. I don't want to think. I have had nine such miserable
years. All through the war there was one's work, one's hospital, the
excitement of the gigantic struggle. And now everything seems flat. One
struggles on without incentive.
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