was the earth-shaking problem, by the way? Finding a
governess for Effie, wasn't it?"

"But I gave you my reason: the reason why it was an
obstacle. I wrote you fully about it."

"Yes, I know you did." He lifted her hand and kissed it.
"How far off it all seems, and how little it all matters
today!"

She looked at him quickly. "Do you feel that? I suppose I'm
different. I want to draw all those wasted months into
today--to make them a part of it."

"But they are, to me. You reach back and take everything--
back to the first days of all."

She frowned a little, as if struggling with an inarticulate
perplexity. "It's curious how, in those first days, too,
something that I didn't understand came between us."

"Oh, in those days we neither of us understood, did we? It's
part of what's called the bliss of being young."

"Yes, I thought that, too: thought it, I mean, in looking
back. But it couldn't, even then, have been as true of you
as of me; and now----"

"Now," he said, "the only thing that matters is that we're
sitting here together."