"Do you seriously mean—what you say?" she asked, pausing between the words.
"Certainly. I am not given to speaking at random."
"You mean—you would insist?"
"I hope it would never come to that."
"Mon Dieu, no. It never would!" She flung up her head with a broken sound between a laugh and a sob. "Because—if it ever did——"
She hung on the word a moment; and in a flash Lenox saw how near they were to repeating the initial tragedy of more than six years ago.
"Quita," he broke in sharply, "listen to me before you say unconsidered things that we may both of us regret. Are we going to make havoc of everything again at the outset? Tell me that."
"How do I know? It depends on you. I think I told you then, that you might as well expect me to give up seeing or hearing as to give up my art. And that is truer—ten times truer—to-day, even though I am . . . your wife."
He saw her vibrating like a smitten harp-string; saw the quick rise and fall of the lace at her breast; and it was all a man could do to keep his hands off her. He had to remind himself that she was no child to be comforted with empty kisses; but very woman and very artist, torn between the master-forces of life.
"See here, lass," he said quietly, laying aside his half-smoked cigar. "As this is a big matter for us both, we may as well get at the root of it straight away. You said this afternoon that you could not give up your individuality because you had accepted marriage. Very well. Neither can I. That still leaves us two alternatives. Either we must give up the notion of living together; or we must be prepared to make concessions—both of us. That is why I said that marriage means compromise. If we go on much longer as we have been doing lately, seeing next to nothing of one another because the house has been converted into a surplus club for half the fellows in the station; and if you are going to spend your time 'getting inside' other men with a view to painting their portraits, we shall simply drift apart as the Nortons did. Conditions of life out here make that sort of thing fatally easy to fall into. But I tell you plainly that if there is to be no attempt at amalgamation, if we are each to go our own way, then—we must lead separate lives. I would not even have you in India. It would be a case of going home."