III

Eve knew what it had meant to him; “age makes no difference.” Then might life suddenly shine like that at any moment, right up to the end.⁠ ⁠… And it made Eve so wonderful; having no idea, all those years, and thinking him just a very kind old man to come, driving, almost from his deathbed, with a little rose-tree in the carriage for her. It was so perfect that he wrote only after she had gone, and he knew he was dying; a youth in love for the first time. If there were a future life he would be watching, for Eve to walk gently in crowned with song and making everything sing all round her.⁠ ⁠… But what of the wife, and of Eve’s future husband? In Heaven there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage⁠ ⁠… but Kingsley said, then that has nothing to do with me and my wife. Perhaps that was an example of the things he suddenly thought of, walking quickly up and down the garden with a friend, and introduced by saying “I have always thought.”⁠ ⁠… But perhaps the things that occur to you suddenly for the first time in conversation are the things you have always thought, without knowing it⁠ ⁠… that was one of the good things in talking to Michael Shatov, finding out thoughts, looking at them when they were expressed and deciding to change them, or think them more decidedly than ever⁠ ⁠… she could explain all that to Eve in the morning as an introduction to him. Or perhaps she could again say, having Eve’s attention free of the shop, “I have two pounds to spend on chocolate. Isn’t it extraordinary. I must, I am on my honour,” and then go on. It was horrible that Eve had hardly noticed such a startling remark.⁠ ⁠… She turned impatiently; the morning would never come; she would never sleep in this stagnant shut-in motionless air. Tomorrow night she would be in a room by herself at Harry’s; but not quite so near to the sea. How could Eve shut out life and the sound of the sea? She puffed her annoyance, hardly caring if Eve were disturbed, ready to ask her if she could not smell the smell of the house and the shop and the little back room. But that was not true. She was imagining it because the motionless air was getting on her nerves. If she could not forget it she would have no sleep until she dozed with exhaustion in the morning. And tomorrow