“Yes. But he says we must first of all be aboveboard. He says he sees everything differently now. That’s what I mean when I say that I don’t understand him. He says love’s not the same kind of feeling to him that it was. There’s something of Meredith’s that he quotes—I wish I could remember it—something about a mortal lease.”
“Good Lord,” Campton groaned, not so much at the hopelessness of the case as at the hopelessness of quoting Meredith to her. After a while he said abruptly: “You must forgive my asking: but things change sometimes—they change imperceptibly. Do you think he’s as much in love with you as ever?”
He had been half afraid of offending her: but she appeared to consider the question impartially, and without a shadow of resentment. “Sometimes I think more—because in the beginning it wasn’t meant to last. And now—if he wants to marry me? Oh, I wish I knew what to do!”
Campton continued to ponder. “There’s one more question, since we’re talking frankly: what does Talkett know of all this?”
She looked frightened. “Oh, nothing, nothing!”
“And you’ve no idea how he would take it?”
She examined the question with tortured eyebrows, and at length, to Campton’s astonishment, brought out: “Magnificently——”
“He’d be generous, you mean? But it would go hard with him?”
“Oh, dreadfully, dreadfully!” She seemed to need the assurance to restore her shaken self-approval.
Campton rose with a movement of pity and laid his hand on her shoulder. “My dear child, if your husband cares for you, give up my son.”