The first time Amory allowed Cosimo this peep at her plans his face became blank with dismay. They were sitting together on a bench in the little Embankment garden where the Carlyle statue is. It was an evening early in April, approaching dusk, and on another bench, twenty yards away, a dim huddle under the trees had caused Amory's lips to curl into a smile; it had reminded her of that horrible hypnotizing evening when she had walked on Clapham Common and had returned to pass a night of starts and tremors, lying dressed on Cosimo's bed. She could afford to smile now, though she did so a little disdainfully. Things had improved since then--rather! Cosimo, though he had always been splendid, had been somehow a little off-handed at odd times; not exactly casual, but as if, while esteeming her very highly indeed, his esteem had none the less fallen just a little short of her true deserts; but that, too, was being quickly altered now. And she _would_ like to see Rome too. Quite inferior people had seen Rome, and Amory owed it to herself and to her art not to be crowed over by anybody. She told Cosimo so.
"Yes," he said dejectedly; "I thought that would be the next. You're rising, Amory. You'll remember us poor grovellers sometimes, though, won't you?" Amory's tone of reproach almost passed reproach; it was as if she had received a twinge of pain.
"I don't think I've deserved that of you, Cosimo," she could not forbear saying.
"I beg your pardon, dear, but it is so. You might remember a little longer than most others, because you're finer and truer than they are, but time and distance do make a difference, and it's no good saying they don't. I know."
Amory wondered whether Cosimo knew the difference time and distance made because of Pattie Wynn-Jenkins, but she only shook her head on its white hyacinth-stalk of a neck.
"I don't forget my friends, Cosimo," she said quietly.
"I'm not accusing you, Amory. But," he continued mournfully, "there are brilliant circles in Rome, and I know exactly how you'd take your place there, and it would be quite right and proper in one sense, and nobody would be gladder than I. But I should be buried in that beastly hole Shropshire all the time, boring myself to tears with cows and grass and pheasants and a lot of stupid yokels----"