He grew more reasonable as a belief in her complete seriousness and determination sobered him.  He made desperate efforts to recover his self-control—­to get his big, cool, fine mechanism of a mind into action.  But his mind, to his complete bewilderment, betrayed him.  He’d always looked at Rose before, through the lens of his emotions.  But now that he forced himself to look at her through the non-refracting window from which he looked at the rest of the world, she compelled him again and again to admit that she was right.

“Why shouldn’t I be right?” she said with a woebegone smile.  “These are all just things I’ve learned from you.”

After a long and rather angry struggle with himself, he made up his mind to a compromise, and in one of their cooler talks together, he offered it.

“We’ve both of us pretty well lost our sense of proportion, it seems to me,” he said.  “This whole ghastly business started from my refusing to let Mrs. Ruston go and get a nurse who’d allow you to be your own nurse-maid.  Well, I’m willing to give up completely on that point.  You can let Mrs. Ruston go as soon as you like and get a nurse who’ll meet with your ideas.”

“You’re doing that,” said Rose thoughtfully, “rather than let me go away.  That’s the way it is, isn’t it?”

“Why, yes, of course,” he admitted.  “I was looking at things from the children’s point of view, and I thought I was right.  From their point of view, I still think so.”

She drew in a long sigh and shook her head.  “It won’t do, Roddy.  Can’t you see you’re giving way practically under a threat—­because I’ll go away if you don’t?  But think what it would mean if I did stay, on those terms.  The thing would rankle always.  And if anything did happen to one of the babies because the new nurse wasn’t quite so good, you’d never forgive me—­not in all the world.

“And,” she added a little later, “that would be just as true of any other compromise.  I mean like going and living in a flat and letting me do the housework—­any of the things we’ve talked about.  I can say I am going away, don’t you see, but I couldn’t say I’d go away—­unless ...  I couldn’t use that threat to extort things from you without killing our whole life dead.  Can’t you see that?”

His mind infuriated him by agreeing with her—­goaded him into another passionate outburst during which he accused her of bad faith, of being tired of him, anxious to get away from him—­seizing pretexts.  But he offered no more compromises.  The thing he fell back on after that was a plea for delay.  The question must be decided coolly; not like this.  Let them just put it out of their minds for a while, go on with the old routine as if nothing threatened it and see if things didn’t work somewhat better—­see if they weren’t, after all, better friends than she thought.