At last she took her lips away. Their eyes almost touched as she gazed into his, and said:
"It was always the man. Perhaps I didn't know it, but it was—the man, not the triumph."
CHAPTER XXXVIII
"And you really mean to give up Kensington Square and the studio, and to take Djenan-el-Maqui for five years?" said Mrs. Mansfield to Charmian on a spring evening, as they sat together in the former's little library on the first floor of the house in Berkeley Square.
"Yes, my only mother, if—there's always an 'if' in our poor lives, isn't there?"
"If?" said her mother gently.
"If you will occasionally brave the Gulf of Lyons and come to us in the winter. In the summer we shall generally come back to you."
Mrs. Mansfield looked into the fire for a moment. Caroline lay before it in mild contentment, unchanged, unaffected by the results of America. Enough for her if a pleasant warmth from the burning logs played agreeably about her lemon-colored body, enough for her if the meal of dog biscuit soaked in milk was set before her at the appointed time. She sighed now, but not because she heard discussion of Djenan-el-Maqui. Her delicate noise was elicited by the point of her mistress's shoe, which at this moment pressed her side softly, moving her loose skin to and fro.
"The Gulf of Lyons couldn't keep me from coming," Mrs. Mansfield said at last. "Yes, I daresay I shall see you in that Arab house, Charmian. Claude wishes to go there again?"