Slowly he raised his head.

“I don’t see why——­” he began, but she was so beautiful, so radiant, that he caught his breath and faltered.

She sat down beside him.

“Ah, but you will,” she said.  “It’s very simple, dear.  Even David understands.”

“What does he think?”

“He thinks as I do,” she said quickly.  “He was quite relieved; honestly, dear.  He didn’t want any homesick woman spoiling his songs for him in South America.  And then I suggested Frances Maury in my place.  She has a lovely voice, and she’ll jump at the chance.”

“I’ve never heard her, but I’m sure she can’t sing as well as you,” he said, with returning gloom.  “And it was only for two months.”

She laughed as at an unreasonable child.

“It isn’t the two months, dear.  It’s our whole life.  There would be other partings, you see, other interests drawing me away.  And if it became easier to leave you, then I should know that everything was wrong between us; but if it kept on being hard to divide myself between you and my work, then my work would suffer and so would you.  Either way, it couldn’t go on.  I’m not big enough to do both,” she said.

“I can’t accept such a sacrifice.”

“Don’t you want me with you always?”

He seized her hands and passionately drew her close to him.

“Want you?  I can tell you now.  I’ve been jealous, terribly so, of everyone, everything that touched you.”

“I knew it,” she said.  “That’s one reason why I didn’t sing well to-night.  Now I’m free”—­she threw her arms out with the gesture of flying—­“I’m free to love just you.  We’ll start another life, Oliver, a life of our own.  We’ll be fire-side people, dear, homely lovers content to sit and talk of an evening.  You’ll find me very valuable, really, as a partner,” she said eagerly.  “I’ve never been near enough to your work.  And it’s such wonderful work!” With an impulsive movement she went over and closed the piano.  “I’ll only open it when you ask me to,” she said.

The process of elimination was simple enough.  There was a touch of melancholy in Myra’s measurement of relationships, in her consciousness of their frailty.  People fell away easily, leaving her and Oliver to their chosen isolation.  A dozen regrets or so to invitations, a week or two of evasions over the telephone, a few friends like Martigues turned away at the door when obviously she was at home, a refusal to sing at a charity concert and, most conclusive of all, David Cannon’s advertised departure with another artist, and the thing was virtually done.