Her lack of emotion, of glad enthusiasm, chilled him.  She even ceased to look at him, turning her profile toward him and gazing again abstractedly across the lawn.  A sudden fear took hold of him, the fear that his hesitations, his evident difficulty in getting the thing out, had enabled her to follow the processes by which he whipped himself up to an act that should have been spontaneous.  He had a suspicion, too, that in this respect he had fallen short of the American—­the cowboy, as he had called him.  “I must do better than him,” he said, in his English idiom.  The thought that he might not have done as well was rather sickening.  If he had so failed it was through inadvertence, but the effect on Olivia would be as great as if it was from fear.  To counteract it he felt the need of being more emphatic.  His emphasis took the form of simple common sense.

“It isn’t going to extremes to take up one’s own responsibilities.  I can’t let a fellow like that do things for your father any more than for mine, by Jove!  It’s not only doing things for my father, but for—­my wife.”

Drawing up a small chair, he sat down on the other side of the table.  He sat down with the air of a man who means to stay and take possession.

“Oh, but I’m not your wife, Rupert.”

“You’re my wife already,” he declared, “to all intents and purposes.  We’ve published our intention to become man and wife to the world.  Neither of us can go back on that.  The mere fact that certain words haven’t been mumbled over us is secondary.  For everything that constitutes duty I’m your husband now.”

“Oh no, you’re not.  You’re the noblest man in the world, Rupert.  I never dreamed that there could be any one like you.  But I couldn’t let you—­I couldn’t—­”

He crushed her hands in both of his own, leaning toward her across the table.  “Oh, my darling, if you only knew how easy it is—­”

“No, it isn’t easy.  It can’t be easy.  I couldn’t let you do it for me—­”

“But what about him? You let—­him!”

“Oh, but that’s different.”

“How is it different?”

“I don’t know, Rupert; but it is.  Or rather,” she went on, rapidly, “I do know, but I can’t explain.  If you were an American you’d understand it.”

“Oh, American—­be blowed!” The accent was all tenderness, the protest all beseeching.

“I can’t explain it,” she hurried on, “because you don’t understand us.  It’s one of the ways in which an Englishman never can understand us.  But the truth is that money doesn’t mean as much to us as it does to you.  I know you think the contrary, but that’s where you make your primary mistake.  It’s light come and light go with most of us, for the simple reason that money is outside our real life; whereas with you English it’s the warp and woof of it.”

“Oh, bosh, darling!”

“No, it isn’t bosh.  In your civilization it’s as the blood; in ours it’s only as the clothing.  That’s something like the difference.  In accepting it from Peter Davenant—­which is hard enough!—­I take only what he can do without; whereas—­”