She looked surprised—she was no longer astonished at the newspaper world’s rapid shifts.
“They’re sending me to reorganise the foreign service. They also wish to send a woman to Paris, and didn’t know whom to ask. I suggested you, and reminded them that you speak French. They soon consented. My headquarters will be London, but I’ll be free to go where I wish. Will you come? Won’t you come?”
Evidently he was assuming that she would; but she said, “I’ll have to think it over.”
He looked at her nervously. “Why, I may be away several years,” he said. “And over there——”
“You forget—I’m tied up with Joan. We have a lease. But that might be arranged. Do you know what salary they’ll give me?”
“Sixty a week—and your travelling expenses.”
“Yes,” said Emily, after a moment’s silent casting up of figures. “Yes—the lease can be taken care of. Then, there is my work—what are the advantages?”
“Experience—a change of scene—a chance to do more individual work—and last, and, of course, least in your eyes, lady-with-a-career-to-make, the inestimable advantages of——”
The servant was out of the room. He went behind her chair, and bent over and kissed her. “We shall be happy as never before, dear—happy though we have been, haven’t we? Think what we can do together—how free we shall be, how many beautiful places we can visit.”
She was looking at him tenderly and dreamily when he was sitting opposite her again. “Yes, we shall be happy,” she said, and to herself she added, “again.”