Her expression grew petulant, resentful.  “Do you mean that we couldn’t, perhaps, go to England, if—­if I wanted?” He moved closer to her, brushing the circumference of her skirt.  “You asked me to hold you, to keep you from the past; and I am going to do it.  London is all that you wish to forget; it must go completely out of your life ... never finger you again.”  A faint dread that deepened almost to antagonism was visible on her countenance.  “I suppose to men talk like that seems a sign of strength, of possession; but it doesn’t impress women, really.  You see, women give, or else—­there is nothing.”

“I had no thought of impressing you,” he said simply; “I only repeated what came into my mind, what I mean.  It would be a mistake for me to take you to England, and make both of us miserable.  Beside, there is more to tend here than I’ll ever accomplish.”  She objected, “But other people, workmen, will do the actual labour.  Surely you are not going to keep on with anything so vulgar—­” she indicated the office and desks.  Her features sharpened with contempt.  “I’ll not be a clerk,” he told her gravely.  “But I am responsible for a great deal.  You should understand that for you showed it to me.  Most of what I am now has been you.”  He reached out his hands to her in a wave of tenderness, but she evaded him.  She stood irresolute for a moment and then abruptly turned and disappeared.

A white rim of new moon grew visible at the edge of dusk, and he stood gazing at it before he entered the dwelling.  A dull unrest had become part of his inner tumult, a premonition falling over him like an advancing shadow.  But above all his vague fears rose the knowledge that he would never let Ludowika go from him; that was the root of his being.  Now she could never leave him.  It was natural, he assured himself again, that she should feel doubts at first; everything here was so different from the life she had known; and women were variable.  He would have to understand that, learn to accommodate himself to changing, surface moods, immovable underneath.

She had put on for supper, he saw, a daring dress; and her expression was that which he had first noted, indifferent, slightly scoffing.  Her shoulders and arms gleamed under fragile gauze, her bodice was hardly more than a caress of silk.  He watched her every movement, and got a sort of satisfaction from the knowledge that she grew increasingly disturbed at his unwavering scrutiny.  His mother’s attitude toward Mrs. Winscombe had not changed by a shade, an inflection; she was correctly cordial in her slightly distant manner.

In the ebb and flow of the evening Howat was left with Ludowika for a little, and he bent over her, kissing her sharply.  She was coldly unresponsive; and he kissed her again, trying vainly to bring some warmth to her lips.  She did not avoid him actually, but he felt that something in her, essential, slipped aside from his caress.  His emotion changed to a mounting anger.  “You will have to get over this now or later,” he asserted.  She said surprisingly, “Felix will be home this week.”  He stood with an arm half raised, his head turned, as he had been arrested by her period.