Part 38 (1/2)

He held her face, crumpling it, in his hands.

”What on earth sort of a child are you?” he asked.

”How do you mean?”

”Why--I give you a certain amount of money to spend on clothes and you bring me back fifteen pounds like the little girl coming back with change from the grocer's.”

”But I've got everything I want,” she replied, laughing.

”Have you got an opera cloak?”

”No, I don't want that.”

”Have you got an umbrella?”

She laughed again--head thrown back, like a child at its father's knee.

”No, I have one of my own already.”

”Did you get a--get a--oh, I don't know--did you get boots for tramping through the country with--boots for show, boots for wear, boots for comfort? How many pair of boots _did_ you get?”

”Two.”

”Well--go and get some more and an opera cloak--to-morrow evening, we're going to sit in the Comedie Francais and not understand a word that's said.”

Then they had gone abroad, and life--wonderful--had pa.s.sed from day to day like a pageant before Sally's eyes. The dark moments came with less frequency. After a time, they pa.s.sed away altogether. She saw no end to it; she saw no sin in it. What sin could there be? Janet's arguments had penetrated more deeply into her mind than she had ever imagined. When, on rare occasions, she was alone in the hotel where they happened to be staying--and it was then that doubt, while there was any, oppressed her--she hugged Janet's sayings to her mind, forced them to support her. ”You're only a conventionalist, like everybody else--you're not a moralist.”

Now she was a moralist, or nothing. She had cut the last link with convention and, at a moment such as that, the realization that there was no returning, no getting back, obsessed her with a shuddering fear. She did not understand that she was conventionalist still at heart; she did not divine that she was not the great woman, loving greatly--only the lesser woman, loving, it is true, with all the utmost of her personality, but loving less.

There is no conventionality in greatness. Great natures make laws for lesser natures to obey; and, far though she had gone from the broad path where the little people huddle on their way, the blood of the little people was in her veins and conventionality still held its claim upon her. She liked to think that she was married. It was beyond the strength of her mind to look upon herself as the mistress of the man she loved.

”It cannot end--it can never end,” she told herself. ”He loves me too much and I love him better still. It's as good--quite as good, as being married. The Church makes no difference.” She thought of her father, remembering how, through the very precepts of that very Church, he had found retribution. So people, who married with the Church's sanction, found retribution too. Some lives were miserable; she had known them. What good had the blessing of the Church been to them? None!

Then Traill would return to her and doubts would vanish like shadows that a light disperses. They were happy. She had never conceived of such happiness before. Her mood was one of continual grat.i.tude. She thanked him for everything--if not with lips, then with eyes.

”You remind me of a little starved gutter-arab, whenever I give you anything,” he once said, when he had brought her back from a theatre in Rome and given her supper in the restaurant of the Quirinale.

”Not very complimentary,” she replied without objection.

”Well--you look at me that way--as if I were giving you G.o.d's earth for G.o.d's sake. Have you never been happy before in your life?”

”Never.”

”I don't mean particularly like this. Like this, I know you haven't.

But any other way?”

”No, I don't think I ever have. I went away from home when I was eighteen--I wasn't happy there. Then I had to work too hard.”

”Then you are a little starved gutter-arab.” He took her gently in his arms. ”And what do I seem to you--eh? Sort of fairy prince, I suppose, in gold armour.”

”You seem like G.o.d, sometimes,” she whispered.