A couple with arms entwined crossed on the grass before them, at the edge of the shadow from their tree. The sunlight fell cruelly on their pale, squashed, unkempt young faces. "We're an ugly lot!" said old Jolyon suddenly. "It amazes me to see how--love triumphs over that.""Love triumphs over everything!"
"The young think so," he muttered.
"Love has no age, no limit; and no death."
With that glow in her pale face, her breast heaving, her eyes so large and dark and soft, she looked like Venus come to life! But this extravagance brought instant reaction, and, twinkling, he said:
"Well, if it had limits, we shouldn't be born; for by George! it's got a lot to put up with."Then, removing his top hat, he brushed it round with a cuff. The great clumsy thing heated his forehead; in these days he often got a rush of blood to the head--his circulation was not what it had been.
She still sat gazing straight before her, and suddenly she murmured:
"It's strange enough that I'm alive."
Those words of Jo's 'Wild and lost' came back to him.
"Ah!" he said: "my son saw you for a moment--that day.""Was it your son? I heard a voice in the hall; I thought for a second it was--Phil."Old Jolyon saw her lips tremble. She put her hand over them, took it away again, and went on calmly: "That night I went to the Embankment;a woman caught me by the dress. She told me about herself. When one knows that others suffer, one's ashamed.""One of those?"