Poor Chris! If he had not been so civilised himself, if he had not been such a good sort, he could have faced the position better; but he saw the justice of hers. 'I think if she were sick'--he began.
She gave a little scream. 'Sick! my dear Chris! that settles it. I can't have you bringing back microbes. It--it isn't fair on us, you know. And there are a lot of jolly globe-trotters at the hotel--one of them says he knew me in London.'
There was a world of regret in her tone, and the pity of it, the hideous mistake for her came home to Chris. 'There is no reason,' he said, in a sort of despair, 'why I should turn you out of this'--here he gave a hard sort of laugh--'I don't really care for it, you know, Viva, though I used to think I did. So you had better stop here, and--I'll--I'll go.'
The pity of the hideous mistake for him came home even to her. 'Where?' she asked. 'You won't go and live in that awful city--you mustn't do that. You're not like them, you know; you'd die of it.'
He felt it was true; that he belonged to No-man's-land.
'Perhaps that would be the best solution of the difficulty,' he said gloomily, with a sententiousness which quite took the pathos from the remark.
She looked at him gloomily in her turn, with a certain exasperation. 'Oh! if you want to, of course; but, my dear Chris, do you really think I'm worth that sort of thing; from your point of view, I mean?'
Something about her as she stood, dainty as ever, reminded him of those days in the boarding-house down the Hammersmith Road, when India, and that part of himself which belonged to India, had seemed so very far off. He took a step nearer to her.
'You might be, Viva, you might be.'
She drew back. 'In fifty years' time, perhaps,' she replied shrewdly--for, as she said, she was no fool. 'Why, Chris! can't you see that you have just gone dotty over the new idea of woman as a helpmeet, and companion, and that sort of "biz." And I--why--we girls have left it behind us a bit in England, nowadays.