“You see,” she went on, “things are so complicated already that if we got married we should complicate them more.  There’s so much to be done—­as to papa—­and this house—­and the future—­of the kind of thing you don’t know anything about.  They’re sordid things, too, that you’d be wasted on if you tried to learn them.”

He smiled indulgently.  “And so you’re asking me—­a soldier!—­to run away.”

“No, to let me do it.  It’s so—­so impossible that I can’t face it.”

“Oh, nonsense!” He spoke with kindly impatience.  “Don’t you love me?  You said just now—­in the dining-room—­when—­”

“Yes, I know; I did say that.  But, you see—­we must consider it—­love can’t be the most important thing in the world for either you or me.”

“I understand.  You mean to say it’s duty.  Very good.  In that case, my duty is as plain as a pikestaff.”

“Your duty to stand by me?”

“I should be a hound if I didn’t do it.”

“And I should feel myself a common adventuress if I were to let you.”

“Oh—­I say!”

His protest this time was more emphatic.  There was even a pleading note in it.  In the course of two or three hours he had got back much of the feeling he had had in England that she was more than an exquisite lady, that she was the other part of himself.  It seemed superfluous on her part to fling open the way of retreat for him too wide.

She smiled at his exclamation.  “Yes, I dare say that’s how it strikes you.  But it’s very serious to me.  Isn’t it serious to you, too, to feel that you must be true to me—­and marry me—­after all that’s come to pass?”

“One doesn’t think that way—­or speak that way—­of marrying the woman one—­adores.”

“Men have been known to marry the women they adored, and still regret the consequences they had to meet.”

“She’s right,” he said to himself.  “It is serious.”

There could be no question as to her wisdom in asking him to pause.  At his age and in his position, and with his merely normal capacity for passion, it would be absurd to call the world well lost for love.  Notwithstanding his zeal to do the right thing, there was something due to himself, and it was imperative that he should consider it.  Dropping the stump of his cigar into his empty coffee-cup, he got up and strode away.  The emotion of the minute, far in excess of the restrained phrases convention taught them to use, offered an excuse for his unceremoniousness.

He walked to the other side of the lawn, then down to the gate, then round to the front of the house.  To a chance passer-by he was merely inspecting the premises.  What he saw, however, was not the spectacular foliage, nor the mellow Georgian dwelling, but himself going on his familiar victorious way, freed from a clogging scandal that would make the wheels of his triumphal car drive heavily.  He saw himself advancing, as he had advanced hitherto, from promotion to promotion,