To this Bernadette would not quite agree. "I don't want him to—to have any idea of it till—till the time comes," she said fretfully. "I don't want anybody to have any idea till then—least of all Arthur."
"Well, it's not for long, and we'll be very careful," he said with a laugh.
"Yes, you promised me that when I let you come back here," she reminded him eagerly.
"I know. I'll keep my word." He looked into her eyes as he repeated, "It's not for long."
If Oliver Wyse had not inspired her with a great passion—a thing that no man perhaps could create from what there was to work on in her soul—he had achieved an almost complete domination over her. He had made his standards hers, his judgments the rule and measure of her actions and thoughts. She saw through his eyes, and gave to things and people much the dimensions that he did, the importance or the unimportance. At his bidding she turned her back on her old life and looked forward—forward only. But to one thing she clung tenaciously. She had made up her mind to the crash and upheaval at Hilsey, but she had no idea of its happening while she was there; she meant to give—to risk giving—no occasion for that. Her ears should not hear nor her eyes see the fall of the structure. No sight of it, scarcely a rumbling echo, need reach her as she sailed the summer seas. Oliver himself had insisted on the great plunge, the great break; so much benefit she was entitled to get out of it.
"And be specially careful about Arthur," she urged. "Not even the slightest risk another time!"
"Confound Arthur!" he laughed good-humouredly. "Why does that boy matter so much?"
"Oh, he thinks such a lot of me, you know. And I am very fond of him. We've been awfully good friends, Oliver. At all events he does appreciate me." This was why she felt tender about Arthur, and was more sorry for him than for the others who were to suffer by what she did. She had not been enough to the others—neither to her husband nor to Margaret—but to Arthur she knew that she had been and was a great deal. Besides she could not possibly get up any case against Arthur, whatever plausible complaints she might have about the others, on the score of coldness, or indifference, or incompatibility, or sulks.
"In Arthur's presence I'll be as prim as a monk," Oliver promised her, laughing again, as she left him before dinner.
He strolled out on to the lawn, to smoke a cigarette before going to dress, and there met Judith Arden on her return from the wood.