“It’s good, Roger,” said Nan, when she had told him that the concerto was finished.  “It’s really good.  And I want you to hear it first of anyone.”

Roger smiled down at her.  He was obviously pleased.

“Of course I must hear it first,” he answered.  “I’m your lawful lord and master, remember.”

“Not yet?” she objected hastily.

He threw his arm round her and pulled her into his embrace.

“No.  But very soon,” he said.

“You won’t beat me, I suppose—­like Mrs. Pike’s husband?” she suggested teasingly, with a gesture towards the room where Lady Gertrude and Isobel were closeted with the woman from the village.

His arm tightened round her possessively.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly.  “I might—­if I couldn’t manage you any other way.”

“Roger!”

There was almost a note of fear in her quick, astonished exclamation.  With his arm gripped round her she recognised how utterly powerless she would be against his immense strength, and something flint-like and merciless in the expression of those piercing eyes which were blazing down at her made her feel, with a sudden catch at her heart, as though he might actually do the thing he said.

“I hope it won’t come to beating you,” he resumed in a lighter tone of voice.  “But”—­grimly—­“not even you, when you’re my wife, shall defy me with impunity.”

Nan drew herself out of his arms.

“Well, I’m not your wife yet,” she said, trying to laugh away the queer, unexpected tensity of the moment.  “Only a very hard-working young woman, who has a concerto to play to you.”

He frowned a little.

“There’s no need for you to work hard.  I’d rather you didn’t.  I want you just to enjoy life—­have a good time—­and keep your music as a relaxation.”

Her face clouded over.

“Oh, Roger, you don’t understand!  I must do it.  I couldn’t live without it.  It fills my life.”

His expression softened.  He reached out his arm again and drew her back to his side, but this time with a strange, unwonted tenderness.

“I suppose it does,” he conceded.  “But some day, darling, after we’re married, I hope there’ll be something—­someone—­else to fill your life.  And when that time comes,—­why, the music will take second place.”

Nan flushed scarlet and wriggled irritably in his embrace.

“Oh, Roger, do try to understand!  As if . . . having a child . . . would make any difference.  A baby’s a baby, and music’s music—­the one can’t take the place of the other.”

Roger looked a trifle taken aback.  He held old-fashioned views and rather thought that all women regarded motherhood as a duty and privilege of existence.  And, inside himself, he had never doubted that if this great happiness were ever granted to Nan, she would lose all those funny, unaccountable ways of hers—­which alternately bewildered and annoyed him—­and turn into a nice, normal woman like ninety-nine per cent. of the other women of his somewhat limited acquaintance.