’Of course you are quite right, Harvey.  We can’t rush across Europe at a moment’s notice.’

He rose up, the lover’s light in his eyes again, and drew her to him, and held her in a laughing embrace.

’What has been wrong between us?  It’s a new thing for you and me to be scowling and snarling.’

’I hope I neither scowled nor snarled, dear boy, though I’m not sure that you didn’t.  No doubt, Mrs. Abbott went away thinking we lead rather a cat and dog life.’

‘Hang it, no!  How could she have any such thoughts?’

‘Oh, the drive home that day.’

’Why, whose fault was that?  I should have been all right, except that I couldn’t understand why you had run the chance of killing yourself.’

‘I don’t think I should have cared very much that morning,’ said Alma idly.  ‘I was more miserable than you can imagine.’

‘Why?’

’Oh, I don’t know —­ foolishness.  But you never gave me a word of praise, and I’m sure I deserved it.  Why, she galloped with me like mad for nearly two miles, and I never lost hold of the reins, and I pulled her up by myself and got her round, and drove back to meet you as if nothing had happened.  I told Mrs. Abbott all about it, and she was astonished at my pluck.’

‘Must have been.  So am I.’

‘I doubt it.  I doubt whether you ever think much of anything I do.’

‘That’s rather unkind, because you know it isn’t true.’

‘I always thought very much the same, you know.’

’Rubbish!  But come, what are we going to do?  Naples seems out of the question; but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t go to meet them in London.’

‘You would much rather wait here, and let them come,’ said Alma.  ’I don’t care particularly about going away.  So long as we keep on good terms with each other —­ that’s the chief thing.’

’There has never been a dream of anything else.  We are on good terms as a matter of course.  It’s part of the order of the universe.’

’I’m very sorry, dear, that I threatened the universe with catastrophe; but I won’t do it again —­ indeed I won’t.  I will watch your face, and be on my guard.  And really, you know, under ordinary circumstances, I am good-tempered enough.’

‘What’s all this about?’ cried Harvey.  For she seemed to be in earnest, and spoke with a soft humility, such as might have become the least original of wives.  ’Watch my face, and be on your guard?  Since when have I desired you to be a simpleton?’

’I’m quite serious.  It isn’t foolish at all.  I want to please you; that’s all I mean, dear.’

He gazed at her, wondering, inclined to laugh, yet withheld from it by an uneasy feeling.

’This kind of talk means defective circulation, lost appetite, and so on,’ was his half-joking answer.  ’The way to please me is to get some colour into your cheeks again, and snub me for my ignorance of music, and be your own arrogant self.  But listen.  You’re quite mistaken in thinking I want to stay here till Hugh and his wife come.  It won’t do.  You’re getting far too sweet and docile, and everything detestable.  I had no idea of marrying an angel; it’s too bad if you turn seraphic upon my hands.  I wonder, now, whether, by way of pleasing me, you would answer a plain question?’