"But I don't wish to live abroad. I wish to remain here, and I could not hold up my head on much less than I have now, for, under the circumstances, no one would call on us if we were poor."
He showed that he saw the point, but it suited her to enlarge upon it. "If one has millions and good manners one can do anything in America; everything else is forgiven. But I would never put myself in the position where I might be snubbed or pitied. That's why I must be rich. And as for you, Harry," she continued, "unless you had a stable, steam yacht, and at least two establishments, you would feel, after you had cooled off, that you had thrown yourself away, and, consequently, we should both be miserable."
He laughed a little sceptically, but he did not deny the impeachment. "What a clever woman you are, Lydia! That's one reason I love you so. The thing to do," he said in his caressing voice, "is to prevent matters from reaching the desperate stage. You must patch it up somehow with Maxwell, and—and we shall find ways to see each other," he added meaningly.
She appeared not to hear his suggestion. "One million is the very least that you and I could marry on—and be perfectly happy. And, if we had it, we might be very happy."
Her sigh of regret encouraged his alert warmth. He leaned toward her and whispered, "Let us, then, be happy in the only way which is possible."
She raised a warning hand. It was clear that she had understood his previous innuendo. "To be happy under the rose is respectable abroad, but here it may mean social ostracism," she replied demurely. "I tell you that Herbert is dreadfully in earnest. Besides," she added after one of her deliberate pauses, "Do you not love me? That is what I crave. That is the essential thing for me."
"You are mocking me," he said with choler.
"No; only showing myself conservative and sensible like yourself. Neither of us can afford to sacrifice everything, yet it would be infinitely preferable to live together. You must find our million."
Spencer shrugged his shoulders. "Where? In the stock-market? One plunge, and drink wormwood if I lost? I will make you listen to me yet," he said with the rising energy of one who feels himself at bay. His eyes gleamed ardently, and the lines of his dark countenance, little accustomed to brook opposition, grew rigid as they did in the moments when he concentrated all his nerves on accomplishment.
The charm of his mastering mood was not lost on Lydia, but its effect was to fix her wits still more closely on the problem of their future. Where was the necessary escape or remedy to be found? She lifted her eyes to meet her lover's gaze, but they stared beyond him into the realm of speculation. Suddenly she started as one who sees a spectre—something weird and forbidden. Yet her stricken vision seemed to gather fascination from a longer look, and she moved her lips as though she were bandying words with doubts which fell like nine-pins before her intelligence. Then, with a transport which revealed that she had taken the intruder, however terrible, to her breast as the bringer of a dispensation, she exclaimed: