And yet he was an outsider, blundering
in their wake. Just because they accepted him, taking it for granted
he was one of them, they deepened his isolation. He could not talk
their talk. He could not play with them. He had tried. The old
hunger "to belong" had driven him. But he was stiff with strength and
clumsy with purpose. If he and Francey had not belonged to one
another, he would have been overwhelmed in loneliness.

He shut his ears against them. But when she spoke he had to
listen--jealously, fearfully.

"It would be no use, Howard. You'd come back. You can't strip off
your nationality like an old-fashioned coat and throw it away. All
this--isn't it English and different from any other country in the
world--deeply, deeply different, just as we are different?
England--she's a human, lovely woman, quiet and broad-bosomed, busy
about her home, and only sometimes, in the spring and autumn, she stops
a little to dream her mystic dreams. In the summer and winter she
pretends to forget. She's anxious about many things--how she shall
keep us warm and fed--a little stupid-seeming, with wells of all sorts
of kindly wisdom.

"And Italy--the saint, the austere spirit, close to God, preparing
herself for God, with unspeakable visions of Him. Where I lived"--she
made a sudden passionate gesture of delight--"we looked over the
Campagna, and there were three hills close to one another with towns
perched on their crest, as far from the world and comfort as they could
get. And at night they were like the three kings with their golden
crowns and dark flowing robes, waiting for God to show them the sign.

"But we build our towns in the valleys and sheltered places. We like
our trains to be punctual, and to do things in decent order. We
pretend to be a practical and reasonable people. We're of our soil.
In Italy what do trains matter--or when they come and go--when, even to
those who don't believe in Him at all, it's only God who matters?" She
laughed, shaking herself free. "So you'll come back, Howard--because
you're part of all this. You'll always hate waiting for your train,
and you'll always be a little ashamed of your dreams. And you'll never
be real anywhere else."

Howard applauded solemnly.

"I'll make a poem of that--one day, when I'm awfully drunk, and don't
know what I'm doing."

But Robert sat up sharply, frowning at her, white, almost accusing.

"When did you live in Italy, Francey?"