'You know, Domine,' said Helena--it was his old nickname she used--'you
look quite stern today.' 'I feel anything but stern,' he laughed. 'Weaker than usual, in fact.' 'Yes, perhaps so, when you talk. Then you are really surprisingly
gentle. But when you are silent, I am even afraid of you--you seem
so grave.' He laughed.
'And shall I not be brave?' he said. 'Can't you smell _Fumum et opes
strepitumque Romae_?' He turned quickly to Helena. 'I wonder if that's
right,' he said. 'It's years since I did a line of Latin, and I thought
it had all gone.' 'In the first place, what does it mean?' said Helena calmly, 'for I can
only half translate. I have thrown overboard all my scrap-books of
such stuff.' 'Why,' said Siegmund, rather abashed, 'only "the row and the smoke of
Rome". But it is remarkable, Helena'--here the peculiar look of interest
came on his face again--'it is really remarkable that I should have
said that.' 'Yes, you look surprised,' smiled she.
'But it must be twenty'--he counted--'twenty-two or three years since I
learned that, and I forgot it--goodness knows how long ago. Like a
drowning man, I have these memories before....' He broke off, smiling
mockingly, to tease her.
'Before you go back to London,' said she, in a matter-of-fact, almost
ironical tone. She was inscrutable. This morning she could not bear to
let any deep emotion come uppermost. She wanted rest. 'No,' she said,
with calm distinctness, a few moments after, when they were climbing the
rise to the cliff's edge. 'I can't say that I smell the smoke of London.
The mist-curtain is thick yet. There it is'--she pointed to the heavy,
purple-grey haze that hung like arras on a wall, between the sloping sky
and the sea. She thought of yesterday morning's mist-curtain, thick and
blazing gold, so heavy that no wind could sway its fringe.
They lay down in the dry grass, upon the gold bits of bird's-foot
trefoil of the cliff's edge, and looked out to sea. A warm, drowsy calm
drooped over everything.
'Six hours,' thought Helena, 'and we shall have passed the mist-curtain.
Already it is thinning. I could break it open with waving my hand. I
will not wave my hand.' She was exhausted by the suffering of the last night, so she refused to
allow any emotion to move her this morning, till she was strong.
Siegmund was also exhausted; but his thoughts laboured like ants, in
spite of himself, striving towards a conclusion.