"I am so glad you have come home," she said, holding up her face for his kiss.
He kissed her, but without enthusiasm.
"I am glad you are glad," he said, "but can that mean that you have missed me? From your letters I thought you and Lady Susan were having rather a gay time."
"I was rushing about with her and going to parties, partly because I missed you."
"Partly, and the other part of it was because you like parties and are dull at home, I suppose, unless you have your house full."
"Oh, I am sick of it all, Mario," she said, with a sort of passionate energy that made him believe her, "and I would live quite a different life if you were not away so often, and if I were not thrown too much on my own resources."
"My dear Vera, this is a new development," he said gravely, sitting down beside her, and looking at her with eyes that troubled her, as if they could see too much of the mind behind her face. "You are looking thin and white. Has anything happened while I have been away, anything to make you unhappy?"
"No!" she exclaimed with tremendous emphasis, for she felt as if he were going to wrest her secret from her. "What could happen? But I suppose there must come a time in every woman's life when she has had enough of what the world calls pleasure, when the charm goes out of amusements that repeat themselves year after year; and when one begins to understand the emptiness of a life, occupied only with futilities, when one begins to tire of running after every new thing, actors, dancers, singers, and all the rest of them. I have had enough of that life, Mario; and I want you to help me to do something better with the liberty and the wealth you have given me."
"Do you want a mission?" he asked with a faint smile. "That is what women seem to want nowadays."
"No, Mario. I want to be happy with you. Your business engagements take you so much away from home, that our lives must be sometimes divided; but not always—we need not be always living a divided life, as we have been in the last three years."