“The sand will be rubbed through the skin, and cause mortification,” he remarked to himself.
Madge turned on him with some indignation.
“Ah, can’t you see,” she cried, “that I am serious? And you talk about the sand between your toes! You are rather trying.”
Evelyn paused in his toilet.
“Dearest, I am sorry,” he said. “I thought we were still playing the fool! But we are not—you, at any rate, are not. What is it then?”
This completeness of surrender was in itself disarming, and her tone was gentle.
“It is just this,” she said—“that you and I are lost in a golden dream. But the dream can’t go on forever. What are we to do? Shall we go back to London? Will you go on painting just as usual? People, perhaps, will be rather horrid to us, you know.”
Everything now, even to him, had become serious.
“Do you mind that?” he asked.
“No, of course not, if you don’t,” she said. “But I have been wondering, dear, whether if by your marriage with me you have hurt your career.”