Part 56 (1/2)

With a low sound, Quita captured the hand lying near her own.

”Oh, you utter woman!” she murmured. ”Is it still so beautiful . . .

after three years?”

Honor's colour deepened. ”It's more beautiful. Much more beautiful.

Because now . . there are two of them.”

There was a moment of silence, while Quita fidgeted with the great square sapphire on her friend's wedding-finger.

”You'll think me dreadful,” she said at last. ”But I'm not quite sure that I see the logic of that. For the present, at all events, I only want Eldred, and these . . my spirit children,” she indicated her pictures with a little nervous laugh. ”You must make allowances for the artist woman, Honor. She so seldom feels and does the things she ought to feel and do!”

”That's just why she is apt to be so refres.h.i.+ng!--But believe me, Quita, the most perfect marriage is not quite perfect till it becomes 'the trio perfect,' three persons and one love. That's not fantastic idealism but simple fact. Besides,” she hesitated and caressed a stray tendril of Quita's hair, ”doesn't it seem to you a bigger thing, on the whole, to make men and women to the best of one's power, than to make books or pictures, even fine ones?”

”Yes, in some ways . . it does. And for that very reason I doubt whether I am fitted to make them. It's a gift, an art, like everything else. Not the creating of them, of course. That's a privilege, or a fatality, as the case may be! But the moulding of them, after they are created. You can't deny that they complicate things: and even at this stage, I find marriage a far more complicated affair than I imagined it to be. Didn't you?”

Honor's smile was sufficient evidence to the contrary. But she was old-fas.h.i.+oned enough to have a difficulty in talking about the hidden poem of her life.

”Perhaps we were exceptions, Theo and I,” she said at last. ”We knew one another . . intimately, before starting; and to live with him, and . . in him, seemed to come as natural as breathing. But then, my dear, I'm simply a wife and a mother: not a woman of genius, like you.”

”Aren't you, indeed? Don't pulverise me with sarcasms, please! In my opinion this exquisite pa.s.sion of yours for being 'simply a wife and a mother' is in itself a kind of genius: perhaps the highest there is.

You see and feel the essential beauty of both relations so vividly that you make one see and feel it also; just as certain other kinds of women make one half-ashamed of being a woman at all! Yours is the temperament that gives, Honor, . . gives royally; and is always sure of return because it looks for none. While as for me, my present complications are the natural outcome,--multiplied by six years,--of my long-ago blindness and folly, that sprang from my capacity for taking, without a thought of giving in return. You see, Eldred and I have both an ample time to crystallise in different directions: and the years we let slip may be trusted to exact their debt to the uttermost farthing.--Ah, there he is!”

The words were a mere throb of the heart. She was on her feet when the man entered: and Honor, watching her face, thought she had never seen it so nearly beautiful. She herself rose also, with a prompt excuse for departure.

”I haven't even _seen_ Theo since breakfast,” she said as they shook hands. ”Tent-pegging days are hopeless: and I promised to go down early. Don't trouble to come out with me, please.”

But Lenox insisted: and on his return found Quita back at her canvas, to all appearance working diligently at a difficult bit of detail in one corner. She greeted him with lifted brows.

”Finished your article already?”

”No.”

”Then what on earth are you doing, loafing about in here? I'm busy. I want to get this bit done before I go out.”

”Do you though?” but instead of retreating, he came closer, deliberately confiscated palette and brushes, and drew her into his arms.

”Shall I send Desmond a 'chit,' to say 'I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come'?”

”Yes,--do. He'll forgive you.”

”And shall we go for a long ride across country, when I'm through with my work: and look in at the tent-pegging later?”

For answer she leaned against him with a sigh of content.

CHAPTER XXVII.

”Elfin and human, airy and true; * * * * * *

Your flowers and thorns you bring with you.”

--R.L.S.