"Nothing."
"Oh!"
"Cyprian, don't tease," and her unnerved vexation contained, he imagined, a hint of alarm; "there is nothing the matter. Though I see you are determined to believe that a lie."
"It is one," he replied, opening the newspaper.
She resorted to a stormy exit.
What else could she do when he was right? It seemed sometimes a great deal too high, the price she was paying to preserve their flawless peace. At least, it had been flawless until Digby Maur returned from Rangoon, but not to fall easily into his niche as a casual acquaintance.
She wondered, when she sat staring at him on the river-bank below the garden with its wild, concealing foliage, why she had never before thought of comparing his eyes to a snake's.
He painted on, grimly speechless, but when they travelled over her, devoid of expression, coldly alive, she could have fled in panic. And she had got to see the thing out or everyone would learn that Cyprian had brought her here under false colours and that, somewhere in England, dwelt her husband, complacently aware of their flight.
The scandal would force Cyprian to resign, to whom public criticism of his private affairs, even in simple matters, was real torture. For him, through her, to be obliged to retire on an inadequate pension in a tempest of slander was unthinkable.
Why had she been such a fool as to shrink from confiding, by letter, in Peter?