'Then it's quite certain you will have no time left for a "professional career".'

'If I understand you, you mean that you don't wish me to have any time for it.'

Harvey still smiled, though he could not conceal his nervousness.

'I'm afraid it comes to that.'

So little had Alma expected such a declaration, that she gazed at him in frank surprise.

'Then you are going to oppose me in everything?'

'I hope not. In that case we should do much better to say good-bye.'

The new tone perplexed her, and a puzzled interest mingled with the lofty displeasure of her look.

'Please let us understand each other.' She spoke with demonstrative calmness. 'Are we talking on equal terms, or is it master and servant?'

'Husband and wife, Alma, that's all.'

'With a new meaning in the words.'

'No; a very old one. I won't say the oldest, for I believe there was a time when primitive woman had the making of man in every sense, and somehow knocked a few ideas into his head; but that was very long ago.'

'If I could be sure of your real meaning----.' She made an irritated gesture. 'How are we going to live? You speak of married people in lodging-houses. I don't know much about them, happily, but I imagine the husband talks something like this--though in more intelligible language.'

'I dare say he does--poor man. He talks more plainly, because he has never put himself in a false position--has never played foolishly with the facts of life.'

Alma sat reflecting.

'Didn't I tell you in my letter,' she said at length, 'that I was quite willing to make a change, on one condition?'

'An impossible condition.'

'You treat me very harshly. How have I deserved it? When I wrote that, I really wished to please you. Of course, I knew you were dissatisfied with me, and it made me dissatisfied with myself. I wrote in a way that ought to have brought me a very different answer. Why do you behave as if I were guilty of something--as if I had put myself at your mercy?

You never found fault with me--you even encouraged me to go on----'

Her choking voice made Harvey look at her in apprehension, and the look stopped her just as she was growing hysterical.

'You are right about my letter,' he said, very gravely and quietly. 'It ought to have been in a kinder tone. It would have been, but for those words you won't explain.'

'You think it needs any explanation that I dislike the thought of Hughie going to Mrs. Abbott's?'

'Indeed I do. I can't imagine a valid ground for your objection.'

There was a word on Alma's tongue, but her lips would not utter it. She turned very pale under the mental conflict. Physical weakness, instead of overcoming her spirit, excited it to a fresh effort of resistance.

'Then,' she said, rising from the chair, 'you are not only unkind to me, but dishonest.'

Harvey flushed.

'You are making yourself ill again. We had far better not talk at all.'

'I came up for no other purpose. We have to settle everything.'

'As far as I am concerned, everything is settled.'

'Then I have no choice,' said Alma, with subdued pa.s.sion. 'We shall live as we have done. I shall accept any engagement that offers, in London or the country, and regard music as my chief concern. You wished it, and so it shall be.'

Rolfe hesitated. Believing that her illness was the real cause of this commotion, he felt it his duty to use all possible forbearance; yet he knew too well the danger of once more yielding, and at such a crisis.

The contest had declared itself--it was will against will; to decide it by the exertion of his sane strength against Alma's hysteria might be best even for the moment. He had wrought himself to the point of unwonted energy, a state of body and mind difficult to recover if now he suffered defeat. Alma, turning from him, seemed about to leave the room.

'One moment----'

She looked round, carelessly attentive.

'That wouldn't be living as we have done. It would be an intolerable state of things after this.'

'It's your own decision.'

'Far from it. I wouldn't put up with it for a day.'

'Then there's only one thing left: I must go and live by myself.'

'I couldn't stand that either, and wouldn't try.'

'I am no slave! I shall live where and how I choose.'

'When you have thought about it more calmly, your choice will be the same as mine.'

Trembling violently, she backed away from him. Harvey thought she would fall; he tried to hold her by the arm, but Alma shook him off, and in the same moment regained her strength. She faced him with a new defiance, which enabled her at last to speak the words. .h.i.therto unutterable.

'How do you think I can bear to see Hughie with _those_ children?'

Rolfe stood in amaze. The suddenness of this reversion to another stage of their argument enhanced his natural difficulty in understanding her.

'What children?'

'Those two--whatever their name may be.'

'Wager's boy and girl?'

'You call them so.'

'Are you going crazy? I _call_ them so?--what do you mean?'

A sudden misgiving appeared in Alma's eyes; she stared at him so strangely that Harvey began to fear for her reason.

'What is it, dear? What have you been thinking? Tell me--speak like yourself----'

'Why do you take so much interest in them?' she asked faintly.