‘Why not put it the other way about, and say that men can love to begin with, but so soon grow careless?’
‘Because I am myself an instance to the contrary.’
Nancy smiled, but was not satisfied.
‘The only married people,’ Tarrant pursued, ‘who can live together with impunity, are those who are rich enough, and sensible enough, to have two distinct establishments under the same roof. The ordinary eight or ten-roomed house, inhabited by decent middle-class folk, is a gruesome sight. What a huddlement of male and female! They are factories of quarrel and hate—those respectable, brass-curtain-rodded sties—they are full of things that won’t bear mentioning. If our income never rises above that, we shall live to the end of our days as we do now.’
Nancy looked appalled.
‘But how can you hope to make thousands a year?’
‘I have no such hope; hundreds would be sufficient. I don’t aim at a house in London; everything there is intolerable, except the fine old houses which have a history, and which I could never afford. For my home, I want to find some rambling old place among hills and woods,—some house where generations have lived and died,—where my boy, as he grows up, may learn to love the old and beautiful things about him. I myself never had a home; most London children don’t know what is meant by home; their houses are only more or less comfortable lodgings, perpetual change within and without.’
‘Your thoughts are wonderfully like my father’s, sometimes,’ said Nancy.
‘From what you have told me of him, I think we should have agreed in a good many things.’
‘And how unfortunate we were! If he had recovered from that illness,—if he had lived only a few months,—everything would have been made easy.’