'No.'
Did he see what was beneath them? For a peculiar fire leapt into the grey eyes. He spoke in the same tone he had used before.
'Suppose, Hazel, we lose twenty-five per cent. of our pleasure? And suppose Primrose gains a hundred?' He was holding her close and tenderly, looking down into her eyes with all the power of his.
'Well,' said Hazel,'I suppose she would.'
'And I suppose we should. I ask nobody for my pleasure to be a third with us. I suppose it will be a trial to me when we go home, to have Heinert at the dinner table and talking to me in the evening. And yet, Hazel, just because you are so much to me, I dare not but pour pleasure into every cup I see standing empty; even though I let a few drops of my own go.'
She answered softly 'Yes,'yet was very near adding, 'But you are spilling _mine!'_It was rather hard. Would he be always doing such things, over the head of her pleasure? But in the new life and purpose awake in her, Wych Hazel had found a new set of answers to trouble some questions. If the answers were also sometimes difficult, they were at least conclusive. And now, as she stood there, these words came:
"For even Christ pleased not himself."
"Even,"what was she, to set up her pleasure against anybody's good? A quiver crept round her lips for a minutebut then she looked up and laughed.
'I am just as perverse as I can be, to-night,' she said. 'Stroked all the wrong way. That disposes of everything.'
Rollo bent and pressed his lips to those soft trembling ones, and still holding her fast, caressed face and hair with the free hand; his face shewing more delight in her than Hazel was in a condition to observe; though the tenderness of tone and touch spoke their own language.