"You see a few people?"I inquired.
"A few.And they have been very kind to us.The Buffons,whom I met at Etretat,and some of their friends,mostly educated French people."The little railway carriage in which we sat rocked with speed as we flew through the French landscape.I caught glimpses of solid,Norman farm buildings,of towers and keeps and delicate steeples,and quaint towns;of bare poplars swaying before the March gusts,of green fields ablaze in the afternoon sun.I took it all in distractedly.Here was Maude beside me,but a Maude I had difficulty in recognizing,whom I did not understand:who talked of a life she had built up for herself and that seemed to satisfy her;one with which I had nothing to do.I could not tell how she regarded my re-intrusion.As she continued to talk,a feeling that was almost desperation grew upon me.I had things to say to her,things that every moment of this sort of intercourse was making more difficult.And I felt,if I did not say them now,that perhaps I never should:that now or never was the appropriate time,and to delay would be to drift into an impossible situation wherein the chance of an understanding would be remote.
There was a pause.How little I had anticipated the courage it would take to do this thing!My blood was hammering.
"Maude,"I said abruptly,"I suppose you're wondering why I came over here."She sat gazing at me,very still,but there came into her eyes a frightened look that almost unnerved me.She seemed to wish to speak,to be unable to.Passively,she let my hand rest on hers.