Victoria shook her head slowly, and smiled at him.
"I couldn't fill the position," she said.
"Perhaps," he replied, smiling back at her, "perhaps I am the best judge of that."
"And you thought," she asked slowly, "that I was that kind of a woman?"
"I know it to be a practical certainty," said Mr. Crewe.
"Practical certainties," said Victoria, "are not always truths. If I should sign a contract, which I suppose, as a business man, you would want, to live up to the letter of your specifications,—even then I could not do it. I should make life a torture for you, Humphrey. You see, I am honest with you, too—much as your offer dazzles me." And she shook her head again.
"That," exclaimed Mr. Crewe, impatiently, "is sheer nonsense. I want you, and I mean to have you."
There came a look into her eyes which Mr. Crewe did not see, because her face was turned from him.
"I could be happy," she said, "for days and weeks and years in a but on the side of Sawanec. I could be happy in a farm-house where I had to do all the work. I am not the model housewife which your imagination depicts, Humphrey. I could live in two rooms and eat at an Italian restaurant—with the right man. And I am afraid the wrong one would wake up one day and discover that I had gone. I am sorry to disillusionize you, but I don't care a fig for balls and garden-parties and salons. It would be much more fun to run away from them to the queer places of the earth—with the right man. And I should have to possess one essential to put up with—greatness and what you call a public career."
"And what is that essential?" he asked.