"Yes, return journeys are generally rather a nuisance, I suppose," he said, "though my experience of that particular form of nuisance is limited. I have not been outward-bound often enough to know much of the regret of being homeward-bound. And yet, I own, I should not much mind driving on and on everlastingly on a dreamy afternoon like this, and—and as I find myself just now—driving on and seeking some El Dorado—of the spirit, I mean, not of the pocket—seeking the Fortunate Isles that lie beyond the sunset. For it would be not a little fascinating to give one's accustomed self, and all that goes to make up one's accepted identity, the slip—to drive clean out of one's old circumstances and find new heavens, a new earth, and a new personality elsewhere. What do you say, Helen, shall we try it?"
But Helen sat immobile, her face averted, listening intently, revolving many things in her mind, meditating how and when most advantageously to speak.
"It would be such an amiable and graceful experiment to try on my own people, too, wouldn't it?" the young man continued, with a sudden change of tone. "And I am so eminently fitted to lose myself in a crowd without fear of recognition, just the person for a case of mistaken identity!"
"Do not say such things, Richard, please. They distress me," Madame de Vallorbes put in quickly. "And, believe me, I have no quarrel with the return journey in this case. At Brockhurst I could fancy myself to have found the Fortunate Isles of which you spoke just now. I have been very happy there—too happy, perhaps, and therefore, to-day, the whip has come down across my back, just to remind me."
"Ah! now you say the painful things," Dick interrupted. "Pray don't—I—I don't like them."
Madame de Vallorbes turned her head and looked at him with the strangest expression.
"My metaphor was not out of place. Do you imagine horses are the only animals a man drives, mon beau cousin? Some men drive the woman who belongs to them, and that not with the lightest bit, I promise you. Nor do they forget to tie blood-knots in the whip-lash when it suits them to do so."
"What do you mean?" he asked abruptly.
"Merely that the letters, which so stupidly endangered my self-control at luncheon, contained examples of that kind of driving."
"How—how damnable," the young man said between his teeth.