"Must I say?" smiled Mrs. Dennison. "For shame, Harry! You might be on your honeymoon."

He moved away, and flung himself into a chair.

"I don't think it's fair of Ruston," he broke out, "to run away and leave it all to me."

"Why, you told him you could do it perfectly! I heard you say so."

"How could I say anything else, when--when----"

"And originally you were both to be away! After all, you're not stopping because of Omof.a.ga, but because Sir George has got the gout."

Harry Dennison, convicted of folly, had no answer, though he was hurt that he should be convicted out of his wife's mouth. He shuffled his feet about and began to whistle dolefully.

Mrs. Dennison looked at him with smothered impatience. Their little boy behaved like that when he was in a naughty mood--when he wanted the moon, or something of that kind, and thought mother and nurse cruel because it didn't come. Mrs. Dennison forgot that mother and nurse were fate to her little boy, or she might have sympathised with his naughty moods a little better.

She rose now and walked slowly over to her husband. She had a hand on his chair, and was about to speak, when he stopped his whistling and jerked out abruptly,

"What did he mean about the kingdom?"

Mrs. Dennison's hand slid away and fell by her side. Harry caught her look of cold anger. He leapt to his feet.

"Maggie, I'm a fool," he cried. "I don't know what's wrong with me. Sit down here."

He made her sit, and half-crouched, half-knelt beside her.

"Maggie," he went on, "are you angry? d.a.m.n the joke! I don't want to know. Are you sorry I'm not coming?"

"What a baby you are, Harry! Oh, yes, awfully sorry."

He knew so well what he wanted to say: he wanted to tell her that she was everything to him, that to be out of her heart was death: that to feel her slipping away was a torture: he wanted to woo and win her over again--win her more truly than he had even in those triumphant days when she gave herself to him. He wanted to show her that he understood her--that he was not a fool--that he was man enough for her! Yes, that she need not turn to Ruston or anybody else. Oh, yes, he could understand her, really he could.

Not a word of it would come. He dared not begin: he feared that he would look--that she would find him--more silly still, if he began to say that sort of thing. She was smiling satirically now--indulgently but satirically, and the emphasis of her purposely childish "awfully"

betrayed her estimation of his question. She did not understand the mood. She was accustomed to his admiration--worship would hardly be too strong a word. But the implied demand for a response to it seemed strange to her. Her air bore in upon him the utter difference between his thoughts of her and the way she thought about him. Always dimly felt, it had never pressed on him like this before.

"Really, I'm very sorry, dear," she said, just a little more seriously.

"But it's only a fortnight. We're not separating for ever," and her smile broke out again.

With a queer feeling of hopelessness, he rose to his feet. No, he couldn't make her feel it. He had suffered in the same way over his speeches; he couldn't make people feel them either. She didn't understand. It was no use. He began to whistle again, staring out of the open window.

"I shall go to bed, Harry. I'm tired. I've been seeing that the maid's packed what I wanted, and it's harder work than packing oneself."

"Give me a kiss, Meg," he said, turning round.

She did not do that, but she accepted his kiss, and he, turning away abruptly, shaped his lips to resume his tune. But now the tune wouldn't come. His wife left him alone. The tune came when she was there. Now it wouldn't. Ah, but the words would. He muttered them inaudibly to himself as he stood looking out of the window. They sounded as though they must touch any woman's heart. With an oath he threw himself on to the sofa, trying now to banish the haunting words--the words that would not come at his call, and came, in belated uselessness, to mock him now. He lay still; and they ran through his head. At last they ceased; but, before he could thank G.o.d for that, a strange sense of desolation came over him. He looked round the empty, silent room, that seemed larger now than in its busy daylight hours. The house was all still; there might have been one lying dead in it. It might have been the house of a man who had lost his wife.

CHAPTER XI.

AGAINST HIS COMING.

"The great Napoleon once observed----"

"Don't quote from 'Anecdotes, New and Old,'" interrupted Adela unkindly.

"That when his death was announced," pursued Lord Semingham, who thought it good for Adela to take no notice of such interruptions, "everybody would say _Ouf_. I say '_Ouf_' now," and he stretched his arms luxuriously to their full length. "There's room here," he added, explaining the gesture.

"Well, who's dead?" asked Adela, choosing to be exasperatingly literal.

"n.o.body's dead; but a lot of people--and things--are a long way off."

"That's not so satisfactorily final," said Adela.

"No, but it serves for the time. Did you see me on my bicycle this morning?"

"What, going round here?" and Adela waved her hand circularly, as though embracing the broad path that runs round the gra.s.s by the sea at Dieppe.

"Yes--just behind a charming _Parisienne_ in a pair of--behind a charming _Parisienne_ in an appropriate costume."

"Bessie must get one," said Adela.

"Good heavens!"

"I mean a bicycle."

"Oh, certainly, if she likes; but she'd as soon mount Salisbury Spire."

"How did you learn?"

"I really beg your pardon," said Semingham, "but the fact is--Ruston taught me."

"Let's change the subject," said Adela, smiling.

"A charming child, this Marjory Valentine," observed Semingham. "She's too good for young Evan. I'm very glad she wouldn't have him."

"I'm not."

"You're always sorry other girls don't marry. Heaven knows why."

"Well, I'm sorry she didn't take Evan."

"Why?"

"I can't tell you."

"Not--not the forbidden topic?"