‘That sounds so prettily from your lips, Nancy, that I’m half ashamed to contradict it. But the truth is that you can only say such things because we live apart. Don’t deceive yourself. With a little more money, this life of ours would be as nearly perfect as married life ever can be.’
Nancy remembered a previous occasion when he spoke to the same purpose. But it was in the time she did not like to think of, and in spite of herself the recollection troubled her.
‘You must have more variety,’ he added. ‘Next year you shall come into town much oftener—’
‘I’m not thinking of that. I always like going anywhere with you; but I have plenty of occupations and pleasures at home.—I think we ought to be under the same roof.’
‘Ought? Because Mrs. Tomkins would cry haro! if her husband the greengrocer wasn’t at her elbow day and night?’
‘Have more patience with me. I didn’t mean ought in the vulgar sense—I have as little respect for Mrs. Tomkins as you have. I don’t want to interfere with your liberty for a moment; indeed it would be very foolish, for I know that it would make you detest me. But I so often want to speak to you—and—and then, I can’t quite feel that you acknowledge me as your wife so long as I am away.’
Tarrant nodded.
‘I quite understand. The social difficulty. Well, there’s no doubt it is a difficulty; I feel it on your account. I wish it were possible for you to be invited wherever I am. Some day it will be, if I don’t get run over in the Strand; but—’
‘I should like the invitations,’ Nancy broke in, ‘but you still don’t understand me.’
‘Yes, I think I do. You are a woman, and it’s quite impossible for a woman to see this matter as a man does. Nancy, there is not one wife in fifty thousand who retains her husband’s love after the first year of marriage. Put aside the fools and the worthless; think only of women with whom you might be compared—brave, sensible, pure-hearted; they can win love, but don’t know how to keep it.’