"I was absorbed in an interesting subject. It is over--_voila tout_."

"No, Quita; I do not understand," he answered, repressed heat hardening his voice and face more than he knew. "To a mere soldier it all sounds rather inhuman; and I can only say that if you find it so necessary to 'get inside' your subjects, as you express it, you had better make women and children your speciality, and let us poor devils alone."

"Women and children? But, my dear--what a suggestion! One does not choose one's subjects to order. Women and children don't interest me.

I have always preferred to paint men, and always shall."

"Then I'm afraid it may end in your having to drop portrait painting altogether."

That touched the artist to the quick. With a small gasp--as if he had struck her--she sank upon the arm of his big chair; her hands clasped, so that the knuckles stood out sharp and white; two spots of fire burning in her cheeks.

"Do you seriously mean--what you say?" she asked, pausing between the words.

"Certainly. I am not given to speaking at random."

"You mean--you would insist?"

"I hope it would never come to that."

"_Mon Dieu_, no. It never would!" She flung up her head with a broken sound between a laugh and a sob. "Because--if it ever did----"

She hung on the word a moment; and in a flash Lenox saw how near they were to repeating the initial tragedy of more than six years ago.

"Quita," he broke in sharply, "listen to me before you say unconsidered things that we may both of us regret. Are we going to make havoc of everything again at the outset? Tell me that."

"How do I know? It depends on you. I think I told you then, that you might as well expect me to give up seeing or hearing as to give up my art. And that is truer--ten times truer--to-day, even though I am . . . your wife."

He saw her vibrating like a smitten harp-string; saw the quick rise and fall of the lace at her breast; and it was all a man could do to keep his hands off her. He had to remind himself that she was no child to be comforted with empty kisses; but very woman and very artist, torn between the master-forces of life.

"See here, la.s.s," he said quietly, laying aside his half-smoked cigar.

"As this is a big matter for us both, we may as well get at the root of it straight away. You said this afternoon that you could not give up your individuality because you had accepted marriage. Very well.

Neither can I. That still leaves us two alternatives. Either we must give up the notion of living together; or we must be prepared to make concessions--both of us. That is why I said that marriage means compromise. If we go on much longer as we have been doing lately, seeing next to nothing of one another because the house has been converted into a surplus club for half the fellows in the station; and if you are going to spend your time 'getting inside' other men with a view to painting their portraits, we shall simply drift apart as the Nortons did. Conditions of life out here make that sort of thing fatally easy to fall into. But I tell you plainly that if there is to be no attempt at amalgamation, if we are each to go our own way, then--we must lead separate lives. I would not even have you in India.

It would be a case of going home."

The two spots of fire had died out of her face, and she turned wide, startled eyes upon him.

"I don't--quite understand." Her voice was barely audible, "Are you telling me--to go?"

"My dear--can you ask that? I am only pointing out the conditions that might make such a catastrophe--inevitable. Looking things in the face may prevent future friction and misunderstanding, which are the very devil. What's more, I never realised till lately what a very big factor your art is in your life. I believe it is the biggest thing of all. Am I right?"

"I don't know. I can't tell--yet."

He straightened himself, and his face hardened.

"You can easily find out by putting the matter to practical proof. In fact, I am going to make a proposal that will not leave you very long in doubt. You have genius, Quita. I recognise that. And I want you to think seriously over all you said this afternoon about not cramping or distorting your individuality to suit my 'prejudices.' If you feel that your art must come before everything, that marriage will only hamper its full development, without making good what you lose,--in fact, if you think that the purely artist life will be better and happier for you in the long-run, I would sooner you said so frankly, I would indeed."

"Eldred!" she gasped, between indignation and fear. But he motioned her to silence.

"Hear me out first. I told you I had a good deal to say; and as I am not often taken that way, you must bear with me, for once. You know now something, at least, of what it means for a man and woman to live together, as we do. I warned you that I should prove a sorry bargain; and--take me or leave me--I cannot pretend that any amount of compromise will make me other than I am. You think me hard, narrow, conventional, in some respects, no doubt. But in a matter so vital conventional moralities go for nothing. I want the truth. If you believe, as I said, that art must stand first with you--always, I shall respect your frankness and courage in telling me so; and I will give you--such freedom as the circ.u.mstances admit."

"_Mon Dieu_!" she breathed, and for a second or two could say no more.

She had touched the bed-rock of granite in the man at last. Then the fear that clutched at her found words, in her own despite.

"Have I killed--your love, so soon? Surely you could not make such a suggestion--in cold blood, unless--I had."

"You are simply shifting the argument," he answered without unbending.

"You know whether--I love you. In fact, if it comes to that, it is you, my dear, who have not yet grasped the full meaning of the word, or you would not need to be told that the free choice I am offering you of compromise with me, or independence--without me, is the utmost proof one can give that you and your happiness stand absolutely first----"

At that she made an impulsive movement towards him, and her fingers closed upon his arm. But with inexorable gentleness he unclasped her hand, and put it from him.

"No, no," he said, and there was more pain than hardness in his tone.

"Better keep clear of that form of argument, for the present. Pa.s.sion settles nothing. Contact is not fusion. We have proved it,--you and I. It is not a question of what we feel. That may be taken for granted by now. It is a question of what we are, individually, intrinsically; of how much each of us is ready to forego for the sake of the one essential form of union that counts between a man and woman who are not mere materialists; and we are neither of us that. I don't want my answer to-night, nor even to-morrow. I have not spoken on impulse; and I want you to think very thoroughly over all I have said when your brain is cooler than it is just now."

"But suppose--I don't want to think it over?"

A half smile dispelled his gravity. "Knowing you intimately, I should not suppose anything else! In the two big crises of our life, remember, you were ruled purely by impulse and emotion, and you brought us very near to shipwreck in consequence. But this time, you will do what I ask, and give my slower methods a chance; because this time your decision will be final. If we are to separate again, we separate for life. That much _I_ have decided. The rest--I leave in your hands."

She stood very still, like one magnetised, her gaze riveted on the carpet. His steadfast aloofness had chilled her first headlong impulse of surrender; and she knew now that he was right:--that, dearly as she loved him, independence in thought, word, and act were still the breath of life for her and for her art. He had put the matter to practical proof with a sledge-hammer directness all his own; had opened her eyes to the humiliating truth that never in all her thirty years of living had she given up anything that mattered for any one. And now----

She raised her head with a start, Zyarulla had brought in a telegram, and Lenox stood reading it with a transfigured face, an eager light in his eyes.

"What is it?" she wondered, not daring to ask. "He is going away somewhere--he is delighted. And he says I come absolutely first."

Then Lenox raised his eyes, and a lightning instinct told her that for the moment he had forgotten her existence.

"Well, Quita," he said, unconscious elation in his tone, "I think the Foreign Office must have known we had got to a difficult corner, and decided to give us a helping hand. They want me to undertake an exploration north of Kashmir, and remonstrate with a small chief who has been misbehaving up there. I am to report myself at Simla _ek dum_,[1] to receive detailed instructions of the mission, and we shall have time enough to think things out very thoroughly before I get back."

"Time? How long?"

Her colour had ebbed; but the change in him had steeled her to unreasoning hardness of heart.

"Six months, certain. Possibly more."

"And you are as glad as you can be. One sees that quite plainly."

Her tone stung him to sharp retort.

"Yes, I am glad--since you insist, and since I am no hypocrite."

Pride would not suffer her to remind him of his a.s.surance, "You stand absolutely first." Instead she asked him in a repressed voice--

"Doesn't it occur to you, after your eloquence about what each of us should give up, that this is precisely where your share of the compromise comes in?"

"It occurred to me nearly a year ago," he said simply. "After our talk at Kajiar, I faced the fact that there was an end of my exploring as a hobby;--at least on the big scale that appeals to me most. It was just the price one had to pay for getting you back again; and I paid it--willingly. In fact, I should never have mentioned it, if you hadn't dragged it out of me."

The quiet of his tone, and the kindliness in the blue eyes that challenged her own, brought the blood into her face. He shamed her every way, this big husband of hers. He had counted the cost and paid it--willingly. He would not even have mentioned it. There you have the essence of the man. Her lids fell, and her incurable instinct for comedy set a faint dimple in her cheek. Here he was at his old trick of dragging her on to higher ground; and the perverse spirit of her loved and hated him for it in one breath.

"But you are going now?" she whispered, without looking up.

"Certainly. That is quite another matter. When Government needs my services for work which I have made a speciality, it would be neither right nor possible for me to refuse; and, frankly, I am glad, because I love the work, fully as much as you love yours; and because the opportunity could hardly have come at a better moment."