He uttered a shout of humorous, yet half-genuine, exasperation.
'Do you want me to swear it's a long time since I lost the habit, but it might strike you as manly, and perhaps I had better practise again. What has it to do with you, the kind of life that suits me? Don't you remember my talking about that before we were married? I've had a suspicion that you were getting rather into that state of mind. You dropped your music, and partly, I've no doubt, because you didn't find enough intelligent sympathy in me. You went in for painting, and you've dropped that——'
'It was winter, you see,' Alma interrupted.
'Yes, but that wasn't the only reason. It meant general failure of energy—the kind of thing I've known myself, only too well.'
'What—here?' asked Alma, with some alacrity.
'I meant now and again, all through my life. No; here I've gone on right enough, with a tolerably even mind; and for that very reason I haven't noticed any signs of the other thing in you—till just now, when you lost your head. Why haven't you been frank with me?'
'You take it for granted that I had anything to be frank about,' Alma remarked.
'Yes—and you don't contradict me.'
'Then what were you going to say, Harvey?'
She bent towards him, with that air of sweet reasonableness which showed her features at their best: eye tranquil and intelligent, lips ingenuously smiling; a countenance she wore not thrice in a twelvemonth, but by Harvey well remembered amid all changes, and held to express the true being of the woman he loved.