"While you live, my dear," he replied, "I could never say it to you."
"If you went away to the Antipodes, you would have to say good-bye, my dear André, for I could not accompany you--never in life. I have heard of these countries. They may be good for men, but for women--no. Unless one is archimillionaire, one has no servants. The woman has to keep the house and wash the floor and cook the meals. And that--you know well--I can't do. It may be selfish and a little unworthy but mon Dieu!--I have always been frank--that's how I am. And except on tour abroad where we have lived in hotels where everybody spoke French I have never lived out of France. That is what I was always saying to myself when you were seeking an occupation. 'What will happen to me if he does get a foreign appointment?' I was afraid, oh, terribly afraid. But I said nothing to you. I loved you too much. But now it is necessary for me to tell you what I have in my heart. You are free to go to what wild island you like--that is why it would be absurd for us to marry--but it would be all finished between us."
"That couldn't be," said Andrew. "What would become of you?"
She averted her head and said abruptly, "Don't think of it."
"But I must think of it. During the war----"
"During the war, it was different. A la guerre comme à la guerre. We knew it could not last for ever. You loved me. It was natural for me to accept the support of mon homme, like all other women. But now, if you leave me--no. N-i-n-i, nini, c'est fini."
So all Andrew's beautiful dreams faded into mist. He rose and crossed the little cobbled courtyard and looked out for a while into the shabby by-street in which the hotel was situated. That Elodie should accompany him was the only feasible way, from the pecuniary point of view, of carrying out the vague scheme.
It would be a life, at first, of some roughness and privation. Arbuthnot had laid the financial side quite clearly before him. He could not expect to land on the Solomon Islands without capital (and even a borrowed capital) and expect an income of a thousand pounds a year to drop into his mouth. If Elodie, although refusing to accompany him, would accept his allowance, that allowance, would, of arithmetical necessity, be far, far less than she had enjoyed during the war. Besides, although he was bound tentatively to suggest it, he knew the odd pride, the rod of steel through her nature, which he had come up against, to his own great advantage, time after time during their partnership, and he would have been the most astonished man in the world had she answered otherwise.
Yes, the dream of coco-nuts and pearls had melted. She was right. Even had she consented, she would have been a ghastly failure in pioneer Colonial life. Their existence would have been mildewed and moth-eaten with misery. She knew herself and her limitations. To go and leave her to starve or earn a precarious livelihood with her birds, on this post-war music-hall stage avid for novelty of sensation, were an act as dastardly as that of the late Raoul Mares-caux who planted her there on the platform of the Gare St. Lazare while he was on his ways overseas with the modiste of the Place de la Madeleine.
He turned to find her dabbing her eyes with a couple of square inches of chiffon which, in spite of its exiguity, had smeared the powder on her face. He sat down beside her, with his patient smile, and took her hand and patted it.