She raised herself from the boat and put her hand on his knee.
"Frank, you don't doubt me, do you? There is nothing in the world I could weigh against you and your love, but we must be reasonable. If you had a very strong presentiment that you would be drowned as we sailed home I should very likely be dreadfully uncomfortable, but I wouldn't have you walk back instead for anything. There are many things of which we know nothing—presentiments, fears, all the horrors, in fact—and it would be like children to take them into our reckoning or let them direct us. It is for your sake, not mine, that I want you to go on with that portrait. If I followed my inclination I should say, 'Tear it up and let us sit here together for ever and ever.'"
Frank leaned forward and spoke entreatingly.
"Margy, tell me to tear it up—ah, do, dear, and you may do with me whatever you wish—only tell me to destroy it!"
Margery shook her head hopelessly.
"Don't disappoint me, Frank," she said. "I care for nothing in the world compared to you; but what reason could I give for doing this? I think you often get excited and upset over your work, but that is worth while, because you do good work and you are not permanently upset. You wouldn't give up being an artist for that. And if I saw any reason for telling you to stop this, I would do it. It is because I care for you and all your possibilities that I tell you to go on with it."
Margery thought for a moment of the portrait and the terrible likeness it bore to her husband, and she hesitated. But no; the whole thing was too fantastic, too vague. She did not even know what she was afraid of.
"It isn't the pleasant or the easy course I am taking," she continued. "That wasn't a pleasant look on your face when you shouted at me to give you your palette this morning?"
Frank looked puzzled.
"What did I do?" he asked. "When did I shout at you?"