Thornton laughed lazily as he lit a cigarette.
“My work in the world is to love you, my dear, and I'll promise to let you help me in that as much as you like.”
But Clytie insisted. Sometimes the subjective gets too much for a woman.
“Ah, Thornton dear,” she said. “I want to feel that we are much more than lovers. That will wear off after a time. Oh, yes! don't tell me it won't; a woman learns things all with a rush, you see. And I want to feel that we are one in everything, in all our sympathies and views of life, our ambitions, in all the high and great things that lie before you. I want to be in touch with everything you do and think—to be a real helpmeet for you.”
He took her hand and kissed it, laughing.
“I have got a lot to learn in the way of connubial responsibilities,” he said. “You'll have to train me, my dear. But allow me to remark that the sun is just going to dip over there by the Nervia, and if we want to get in by sunset we shall have to run like the deuce!”
As this was a serious matter,—on the Riviera it is one of the grave responsibilities of life,—Clytie let herself be lifted to her feet, put on her hat quickly, and holding her husband's hand, ran merrily with him down the hill. The exercise and the laughter drove things subjective out of her head for a season. But in the after-time the ghost of this little conversation came and sat at the head of her bed, making mock at a few others who sat on the foot-rail. A thing does not require to be as objective as a murdered monk to have a little ghost all to itself.