But on one thing she was determined:  the first thing she would do when she got home would be to have it out with Frederick.  If he didn’t come to San Salvatore that is what she would do—­the very first thing.  Long ago she ought to have done this, but always she had been handicapped, when she tried to, by being so dreadfully fond of him and so much afraid that fresh wounds were going to be given her wretched, soft heart.  But now let him wound her as much as he chose, as much as he possibly could, she would still have it out with him.  Not that he ever intentionally wounded her; she knew he never meant to, she knew he often had no idea of having done it.  For a person who wrote books, thought Rose, Frederick didn’t seem to have much imagination.  Anyhow, she said to herself, getting up from the dressing-table, things couldn’t go on like this.  She would have it out with him.  This separate life, this freezing loneliness, she had had enough of it.  Why shouldn’t she too be happy?  Why on earth—­the energetic expression matched her mood of rebelliousness—­shouldn’t she too be love and allowed to love?

She looked at her little clock.  Still ten minutes before dinner.  Tired of staying in her bedroom she thought she would go on to Mrs. Fisher’s battlements, which would be empty at this hour, and watch the moon rise out of the sea.

She went into the deserted upper hall with this intention, but was attracted on her way long it by the firelight shining through the open door of the drawing-room.

How gay it looked.  The fire transformed the room.  A dark, ugly room in the daytime, it was transformed just as she had been transformed by the warmth of—­no, she wouldn’t be silly; she would think of the poor; the thought of them always brought her down to sobriety at once.

She peeped in.  Firelight and flowers; and outside the deep slits of windows hung the blue curtain of the night.  How pretty.  What a sweet place San Salvatore was.  And that gorgeous lilac on the table—­ she must go and put her face in it . . .

But she never got to the lilac.  She went one step towards it, and then stood still, for she had seen the figure looking out of the window in the farthest corner, and it was Frederick.

All the blood in Rose’s body rushed to her heart and seemed to stop its beating.

She stood quite still.  He had not heard her.  He did not turn round.  She stood looking at him.  The miracle had happened, and he had come.

She stood holding her breath.  So he needed her, for he had come instantly.  So he too must have been thinking, longing . . .

Her heart, which had seemed to stop beating, was suffocating her now, the way it raced along.  Frederick did love her then—­he must love her, or why had he come?  Something, perhaps her absence, had made him turn to her, want her . . . and now the understanding she had made up her mind to have with him would be quite—­would be quite—­easy—­