“It’s easier for you,” he said, and she answered, “Is it?” in the way that angered him and yet held him, and she thought, without bitterness, that he had never suffered anything without physical or mental tears. “Yes, you have peace at home, but I go back to misery.”
“It’s her misery.”
“That doesn’t make it any better,” he retorted justly.
“I know.” She touched his sleeve and, feeling his arm stiffen, removed her hand.
“And I feel a brute because I can’t care enough. If it were you now—”
Almost imperceptibly Rose shook her head. She had no illusions, but she said, “Then why not pretend it’s me. Tell her all you do. Ask her advice—you needn’t take it.”
“And it’s all a lie,” he growled.
She said serenely, “It has to be, but there are good lies.”
She wished, with an intensity she rarely allowed herself, that he would be quiet and controlled. Though half her occupation would be gone, she would feel for him a respect which would rebound on her and make her admirable to herself, but she knew that life cannot be too lavish of its gifts or death would always have the victory. This was not what she had looked for, but it was good enough; she was necessary to him and always would be; she was sure of that, yet she constantly repeated it; moreover, she loved his bigness and his physical strength and the way the lines round his eyes wrinkled when he smiled; she knew how to make him smile and now and then they had happy interludes when they talked about crops and horses, profit and loss, the buying and selling of stock, and felt their friendship for each other like a mantle shared.
At the worst, she consoled herself, after a time of strain, it was like riding a restive horse. There was danger which she loved: there was need of skill and a light hand, of sympathy and tact, and she never regretted the superman who was to have ruled her with a fatiguing rod of iron. Here there was give and take; she had to let him have his head and pull him up at the right moment and reward docility with kindness; she even found a kind of pleasure, streaked with disgust, in dealing with Christabel’s suspicions, half expressed, but present like shadowy people in her room.