"It is a real job, and I think I could learn to do it pretty well. And of course a wife's the only person who can do it properly."
Still he shook his head. But he hadn't, as yet, any reasoned answer to make, except as before, that it wouldn't work.
"I shouldn't mind the money end of it," she said. "I mean living on yours. I know I can earn my way, and I know you know it. So that wouldn't matter. I'd never feel like a beggar again, Roddy."
"I know," he agreed. "But that isn't it. It isn't a question of what you'd like to be, or are willing to be. It's a question of what you are. You're something more than just my wife. You've got certain talents—certain proved capacities. That's as true as that I am something besides—just your husband. There you are! Try it on the other way around. Suppose I should offer to give up my practise and come down here to live with you—be just your husband and, say, your business manager. You can see that that's preposterous. Or, for that matter, we could both quit. I've made a devil of a lot of money lately. I've an income from my investments of from twenty-five to thirty thousand a year that we could live on, and not do a blessed thing but be husband and wife to each other. Like the McCreas. But it wouldn't work. You've got to be what you are, that's the point, and somehow or other, cut your life to fit. I expect that's one of the things that's been the trouble with us down here. We've both been trying so damned hard to be something. And that won't work."
"What will work then?" she asked. And this was a question he couldn't answer.
"We've just got to go ahead," he said at last, "and see what happens. Perhaps you can work it out so that you can do part of your work at home. We could move the nursery and give you Florence's old studio. And then it would do if you only came down here for your two big seasons—fall and spring."
"That doesn't seem fair to you," she protested. "You deserve a real wife, Roddy; not somebody dashing in and dashing out."
"I don't deserve anything I can't get," he said. "I'd rather have a part interest in you than to possess, lock, stock and barrel, any other woman I can think of."
She came back to him again and settled down in his arms.
"You used to possess me, lock, stock and barrel," she said. "You can do it again, if you'll say the word, Rodney."