little they knew of each other. There came in fact a moment when Marcher
felt a positive pang. It was vain to pretend she was an old friend, for
all the communities were wanting, in spite of which it was as an old
friend that he saw she would have suited him. He had new ones enough--was
surrounded with them for instance on the stage of the other house; as a
new one he probably wouldn't have so much as noticed her. He would have
liked to invent something, get her to make-believe with him that some
passage of a romantic or critical kind _had_ originally occurred. He was
really almost reaching out in imagination--as against time--for something
that would do, and saying to himself that if it didn't come this sketch
of a fresh start would show for quite awkwardly bungled. They would
separate, and now for no second or no third chance. They would have
tried and not succeeded. Then it was, just at the turn, as he afterwards
made it out to himself, that, everything else failing, she herself
decided to take up the case and, as it were, save the situation. He felt
as soon as she spoke that she had been consciously keeping back what she
said and hoping to get on without it; a scruple in her that immensely
touched him when, by the end of three or four minutes more, he was able
to measure it. What she brought out, at any rate, quite cleared the air
and supplied the link--the link it was so odd he should frivolously have
managed to lose.

"You know you told me something I've never forgotten and that again and
again has made me think of you since; it was that tremendously hot day
when we went to Sorrento, across the bay, for the breeze. What I allude
to was what you said to me, on the way back, as we sat under the awning
of the boat enjoying the cool. Have you forgotten?"

He had forgotten, and was even more surprised than ashamed. But the
great thing was that he saw in this no vulgar reminder of any "sweet"