"I shall be glad to spend three months out of every year with you."
"Is that your last word?"
"Yes."
"Suppose you do not begin the arrangement until next year? Then we can still go to Bogotá."
"Are you so wild to go to Bogotá?"
"All life," said Medway, "is based upon compromise."
Hagar, pacing to and fro, in her soft dull-green cotton with its fine deep collar of valenciennes, stopped now before the purple irises and now before the white. "Had I not appeared by your bedside in Alexandria, eight years ago, had I not been at hand during that convalescence for you to grow a little fond of, you would have, all these years, taken Thomson and Mahomet and gone to every place where we have gone, just the same,—just the same,—and with, I hardly doubt, just as full enjoyment. If you had not liked me, you would, with the entirest equanimity, have bidden me good-bye and seen me return with grandfather to Gilead Balm, and you would have travelled on, finding and making friends, acquaintances, and servants as you do to so remarkable a degree, missing not one station or event. If I died to-day, you would do every proper thing—and in the autumn proceed to Bogotá."
"Granting all that," said Medway, "it remains that I find and have found in the past a pleasure in your company.—I am going to remind you again, Gipsy, that all life is compromise."
Hagar, at the window, in the green and shimmering light like the bottom of the sea, leaned her forehead against the sash and looked across into the leafy gardens. Children were there, playing and calling. A young girl passed, carrying smart bandboxes; then an old woman, stooping, using a cane, with her a great dog and a young woman in the dress of a nurse. The soft rumble and crying of the city droned in together with a bee that made for the nearest flower. Hagar turned. "I will go with you for another year, father, but after that, I will go home."