He looked at her hesitatingly. “It’s been pleasant, certainly; but I suppose I shall have to get at my work again some day. You know I haven’t written a line since—all this time,” he hastily emended.
She flamed with sympathy and self-reproach. “Oh, if you mean that—if you want to write—of course we must settle down. How stupid of me not to have thought of it sooner! Where shall we go? Where do you think you could work best? We oughtn’t to lose any more time.”
He hesitated again. “I had thought of a villa in these parts. It’s quiet; we shouldn’t be bothered. Should you like it?”
“Of course I should like it.” She paused and looked away. “But I thought—I remember your telling me once that your best work had been done in a crowd—in big cities. Why should you shut yourself up in a desert?”
Gannett, for a moment, made no reply. At length he said, avoiding her eye as carefully as she avoided his: “It might be different now; I can’t tell, of course, till I try. A writer ought not to be dependent on his milieu; it’s a mistake to humor oneself in that way; and I thought that just at first you might prefer to be—”
She faced him. “To be what?”
“Well—quiet. I mean—”
“What do you mean by ‘at first’?” she interrupted.
He paused again. “I mean after we are married.”
She thrust up her chin and turned toward the window. “Thank you!” she tossed back at him.