Roland had no opportunity of speaking to her on that first evening; Mrs. Curtis, as usual, monopolized the conversation. But he sat near to April. From time to time their eyes met and she smiled at him. And the next morning when he came round to see her she ran eagerly to meet him.
“It’s lovely to have you back again,” she said; “you can’t think how I’ve been looking forward to it!”
Roland was embarrassed by her eagerness. He did not know what to say and stood beside her, smiling stupidly.
“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” she said. And a moment later: “I shouldn’t have thought, after six months, you’d have needed asking!”
Roland met her reproach with a stammered apology.
“I felt shy. I thought you might have got tired of me, all that long time.”
“Oh, but Roland, how horrid of you!” And she moved away from him. But he took her in his arms and made love prettily to her and consoled her.
“I daresay,” she said, “I daresay. But you didn’t write to me so very often.”
“I wanted to, but I thought your mother wouldn’t like it.”
“Oh, but, Roland, that’s no excuse; she expected you to. There’s an understanding.” Then with a quiet smile: “Do you remember the row we had about that understanding?”
“So was I. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I thought you’d never speak to me again, that you’d gone off in a huff, like the heroes in the story books.”
“But the heroes always come back in the story books.”
“I know, and that’s just why I thought that very likely you wouldn’t in real life. I was so unhappy I cried myself to sleep.”
“Don’t you remember how nice you were to me when we made it up?”
They laughed and kissed, and the minutes passed pleasantly. But yet their love-making fell short of Roland’s ideal of love. It was jolly; it was comfortable; but it was little more. He was not thrilled when the back of his hand brushed accidentally against hers; their kisses were hardly a lyric ecstasy. Even when he held her in his arms he was conscious of himself, outside their embrace, watching it, saying to himself: “Those two are having a good time together,” and being outside it he was envious, jealous of a happiness he did not share. It was someone else who was holding April’s hand, someone else’s head that bent to her slim shoulder. It was an exciting experience. But then had it not been exciting to walk across Hampstead Heath on a Sunday evening and observe the feverish ardors of the prostrate lovers?