“You certainly ought to return to California,” he said. “We are all half savage—the strongest of us Californians. The great civilisations fascinate us, but they don’t satisfy, and in time they pall.”
“I’d like to put dynamite under the whole business, and then take Cecil and go and shoot bears with him in the Santa Lucia Mountains and sleep under the redwoods without so much as a tent. I believe I’d be willing to eat acorns.” She sat down and glanced up at him with all her old coquetry.
“You don’t think I’ve made an idiot of myself, do you?” she asked anxiously.
“You could never be other than the most charming woman in the world.”
“Will you pay me three compliments a day, Randolph?”
“I shall probably pay you twenty.”
“I hope to Heaven you will! I need them—I do really need them. Now go and wait for me in the library: I must go up and put some powder on; I feel that I have the colour of a dairy-maid. It’s so nice to order you about—and I couldn’t speak out to a soul on earth as I have to you! I should have burst if you hadn’t come soon. If you get lost in those everlasting corridors ring a bell.”
The promptness with which Randolph obeyed her command, with the little laugh that had always saved his dignity, was the first of his signals that the old Randolph still flourished within that mellowed and polished exterior.
Lee ran up to her room. The door of the dressing-room was open; Cecil was ready for dinner, and alone. Her conscience hurt her, and she was still excited. With all her old impulsiveness she ran in, flung her arms round her husband’s neck and kissed him.
The “Imp of the Perverse” is always hovering near to man awaiting the more subtle climaxes of his life. Cecil adored his wife, but he liked to do the love-making; and Lee, long since, had accepted the submissive and responsive rôle her beloved autocrat demanded. And he was a man of moods, which were deep and showed little on the surface. To-night he was keen for the sport of the morrow, for a renewal of the brief and congenial conversation he had had with his men guests before dinner; and if his wife were to be too absorbed in her friends for several days to give him a moment he should not miss her. He had had a hard Session and the reaction to sport and open air was violent, that was all.