Now James had his feelings, and was rather unhappy over what he called her moods. He thought she did not go out enough. She ought to see more people: a woman liked to be admired. It did not occur to him that she might have been very glad of it from him; but then he didn't know how highly she had been elated with what she called, thinking it really so, his love-in-the-darkness. No, Macartney, if ever he looked into himself, found nothing wrong there. He kept a wary eye through his masking-glass upon Urquhart's comings and goings. As far as he could ascertain he was rarely in London during June and early July. No doubt he wrote to Lucy; James was pretty sure of it; yet he could not stoop to examining envelopes, and had to leave that to Providence and herself. He mingled with his uneasiness a high sense of her integrity, which he could not imagine ever losing. It was, or might have been, curious to observe the difference he made between his two jealousies. He had been insolent to Francis Lingen, with his "Ha, Lingen, you here?" He was markedly polite to Jimmy Urquhart, much more so than his habit was. He used to accompany him to the door when he left, an unheard-of attention. But that may have been because Lucy went thither also.
As a matter of fact Urquhart saw very little of her. He was very much away, on his aerial and other affairs, and did not care to come to the house unless James was there, nor, naturally, very much when he was. They mostly met in the Park, rarely at other people's houses. Once she lunched at the Nugents' and had the afternoon alone with him; twice he drove her to Kew Gardens; once she asked him for a week-end to Wycross, and they had some talks and a walk. He wrote perhaps once a week, and she answered him perhaps once a fortnight. Not more. She had to put the screw on herself to outdo him in frugality. She respected him enormously for his mastery of himself, and could not have told how much it enhanced her love. It was really comical that precisely what she had condemned James for she found admirable in Jimmy. James had neglected her for his occupations, and Jimmy was much away about his. In the first case she resented, in the second she was not far from adoration of such a sign of serious strength.
They never alluded directly to what had happened, but sometimes hinted at it. These hints were always hers, for Urquhart was a random talker, said what came into his head and had no eye for implications. He made one odd remark, and made it abruptly, as if it did not affect anybody present. "It's a very funny thing," he said, "that last year I didn't know Macartney had a wife, and now, six months later, I don't realise that you have got a husband." It made her laugh inwardly, but she said gently, "Try to realise it. It's true."
"You wish me to make a point of it?" he asked her that with a shrewd look.
"I wish you, naturally, to realise me as I am."
"There doesn't seem much of you involved in it," he said; but she raised her eyebrows patiently.
"It is a fact, and the fact is a part of me. Besides, there's Lancelot."
"Oh," he said, "I don't forget him. You needn't think it. He is a symbol of you—and almost an emanation. Put it like this, that what you might have been, he is."
"Oh," said she, "do you want me to be different?"
He laughed. "Bless you, no. But I like to see what you gave up to be made woman. And I see it in your boy."