“Why do you tell me all this about Dick?” Graham demanded another time, as they walked their horses side by side. “To keep me away? To protect yourself from me?”
Paula nodded, then quickly added, “No, not quite that. Because you know I don’t want to keep you away ... too far. I say it because Dick is so much in my mind. For twelve years, you realize, he filled my mind. I say it because ... because I think it, I suppose. Think! The situation! You are trespassing on a perfect marriage.”
“I know it,” he answered. “And I do not like the role of trespasser. It is your insistence, instead of going away with me, that I should trespass. And I can’t help it. I think away from you, try to force my thoughts elsewhere. I did half a chapter this morning, and I know it’s rotten and will have to be rewritten. For I can’t succeed in thinking away from you. What is South America and its ethnology compared to you? And when I come near you my arms go about you before I know what I am doing. And, by God, you want them there, you want them there, you know it.”
Paula gathered her reins in signal for a gallop, but first, with a roguish smile, she acknowledged.
“I do want them there, dear trespasser.”
Paula yielded and fought at the same time.
“I love my husband—never forget that,” she would warn Graham, and within the minute be in his arms.
“There are only the three of us for once, thank goodness,” Paula cried, seizing Dick and Graham by the hands and leading them toward Dick’s favorite lounging couch in the big room. “Come, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings. Come, milords, and lordly perishers, and we will talk of Armageddon when the last sun goes down.”