“I’ve reached an age when I no longer look for perfection—even the perfect marriage,” Gaisford said at length. “And I’ve outgrown romance. And I’ve not many ideals left. When everything else is burnt out, I want to know that you’ve found companionship. You’re as bad as all the rest, Eric; at present you’re doing this for a new emotion... I don’t know this girl—, but is she going to be a companion? It’s an awful thing to marry some one who’s not educated up to your standard; it’s like playing bridge eternally with a partner who doesn’t know one suit from another.”
“She’s—a companion all right,” said Eric softly, remembering with a warm rush of gratitude the new colour that she had already brought into his life. Ivy was quick and receptive; he found her also well-read and intelligent, with a personal standpoint towards books and ideas which she had taken up by herself and would not surrender without a struggle; if she picked up her generation’s catch-words, it was because she was still too young to understand the emancipation of which every one was talking. Best of all, she was adaptable by nature, and he could see her moulding herself to his form in the single hope of bringing him happiness. “She’s companion enough to make me forget everything else—already,” he added.
“Already? It doesn’t occur to you that you’re both drunk with romance at the moment? The reason why your two-penny-halfpenny plays are so popular is that we all love telling ourselves stories and escaping into a world where we can be as dramatic and romantic and purposeful and magnanimous as a character in a book—or as you and this child are being at this moment. Admit that you’re both enjoying it! The heroics, the tragedy, the sacrifice—”
“I’m making no sacrifice, Gaisford,” Eric interrupted, soberly.
“You’re incorrigible! You were bound to say that! It’s in the part. Well, well! I only beg you—because I’m fond of you—not to make a farce of what you call your probation. Imagine yourself criticizing some one else’s play instead of living in one of your own. Detachment, detachment!”
For the next few days Eric conscientiously tried to regard his secretary as a soulless, amorphous machine; Ivy, however, was made too much of a piece to work mechanically from nine till half-past one, then give rein to her feelings from half-past one till three and again relapse into a machine. She toiled as though her life and his career depended on every letter that she wrote; her eyes shone when he came into the room; and she took in every movement of his body and every trick of voice and speech. At the end of the day she sprang up like a child released from school and threw her arms round him.
“Do you always work like this?,” she asked him one night. “It must be bad for you.”
“I don’t call this work,” he answered. “The atmosphere’s too highly charged with Miss Ivy Maitland for that. But I want to get my present job finished, so that, if I go to America—”
“When,” she interrupted with a pleading smile that taxed his fortitude. It was hardly possible to keep at an artificial distance without robbing her of her precarious security.
“We’ll discuss that in three weeks’ time. If I go, I want to go with a clear conscience.”