"Smells good.
Remember the downs at Shipley?"
"Rather."
"Pretty good, those days."
"Yes."
"You're not changed much, Rosamund."
"Yes, I have.
I've changed enormously."
"You've been very successful and you're rich and all that, but you're the same old Rosamund."
Rosamund murmured: "I wish I were."
"What's that?"
"Nothing.
It's a pity, isn't it, Kenneth, that we can't keep the nice natures and high ideals that we had when we were young?"
"I don't know that your nature was ever particularly nice, my child.
You used to get into the most frightful rages. You half choked me once when you flew at me in a temper."
Rosamund laughed.
She said: "Do you remember the day that we took Toby down to get water rats?"
They spent some minutes in recalling old adventures. Then there came a pause.
Rosamund's fingers played with the clasp of her bag.
She said at last: "Kenneth?"
"Um." His reply was indistinct. He was still lying on his face on the tuff.
"If I say something to you that is probably outrageously impertinent, will you never speak to me again?"
He rolled over and sat up.
"I don't think," he said seriously, "that I would ever regard anything you said as impertinent.
You see, you belong."
She nodded in acceptance of all that last phrase meant. She concealed only the pleasure it gave her.
"Kenneth, why don't you get a divorce from your wife?"
His face altered. It hardened - the happy expression died out of it.
He took a pipe from his pocket and began filling it.
Rosamund said: "I'm sorry if I've offended you."
He said quietly: "You haven't offended me."
"Well, then, why don't you?"
"You don't understand, my dear girl."
"Are you so frightfully fond of her?"
"It's not just a question of that.
You see, I married her."
"I know.
But she's pretty notorious."
He considered that for a moment, ramming in the tobacco carefully.
"Is she? I suppose she is."
"You could divorce her, Ken."
"My dear girl, you've got no business to say a thing like that.
Just because men lose their heads about her a bit isn't to say that she loses hers."
Rosamund bit off a rejoinder. Then she said:
"You could fix it so that she divorced you - if you prefer it that way."
"I daresay I could."
"You ought to, Ken.
Really, I mean it. There's the child." "Linda?" "Yes, Linda."
"What's Linda got to do with it?"
"Arlena's not good for Linda. She isn't really. Linda, I think, feels things a good deal."