She looked at him, blushed a little, and waited some moments before she replied.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “It must be because I am not in the habit of doing so. I am not accustomed to you yet. I keep thinking ‘I shall wake up in a minute and he will be miles away.’ Can't you understand? So I am pretending to myself all the time that you are not really here.”
“I see.”
“No, dearest, you don't quite understand; and you are a little disappointed in me because I seem—I must seem—rather flippant. I daren't be serious—I daren't. I daren't believe that I am your wife.”
“But why not?”
She shook her head, and her whole face became clouded by the old, terrible, unnatural sadness which he knew so much better than her laughter.
“I am not used to joy,” she said. “Perhaps, if we ever get to Heaven, our first impulse will be to run back again to Purgatory, where we are more at home!”
“You have too much wit, darling, to be happy anywhere!”
“No! no! I don't ask to be conventionally happy, but I want you always. That is all ... you, always, on any terms—on a rag-heap, in a storm, with jackals howling at us!”
“What a picture!”