‘Alma will think more of him in a year or two,’ Harvey replied.

’Yes.  I’ve noticed that women —­ one sort of women —­ don’t care much about babies nowadays.  I dare say they’re right.  The fewer children people have, the better.  It’s bad to see the poor little squalling brats in the filth and smoke down yonder, and worse still in this damned London.  Great God! when there’s so much of the world clean and sweet, here we pack and swelter together, a million to the square mile!  What eternal fools we are!’

Harvey growled his heartiest agreement.  None the less, a day or two after, he was holding a conversation with Alma which encouraged her secret weariness of the clean and sweet places of the earth.  They had come home from a Richter concert, and Alma uttered a regret that she had not her violin here.  A certain cadenza introduced by a certain player into a certain violin solo did not please her; why, she could extemporise a cadenza far more in keeping with the spirit of the piece.  After listening, with small attention to the matter, but much to the ardent speech and face of enthusiasm, Harvey made a quiet remark.

‘I want you to decide very soon what we are going to do.’

‘Going to do?’

‘About the future —­ where we are to live.’

Alma strummed lightly with her finger-tips upon the table, and smiled, but did not look up.

‘Do you really think of making any change?’

’I leave it entirely to you.  You remember our last talk before we came away.  You have simply to ask yourself what your needs are.  Be honest with yourself and with me.  Don’t sacrifice life to a whim, one way or the other.  You have had plenty of time to think; you have known several ways of life; you’re old enough to understand yourself.  Just make up your mind, and act.’

’But it’s ridiculous, Harvey, to speak as if I had only myself to consider.’

’I don’t want you to do so.  But supposing that were your position, now, after all your experience, where would you choose to live?’

He constrained her to answer, and at length she spoke, with a girlish diffidence which seemed to him very charming.

’I like the concerts —­ and I like to be near my musical friends —­ and I don’t think it’s at all necessary to give up one’s rational way of living just because one is in London instead of far away.’

‘Precisely.  That means we ought to come back.’

‘Not if you do it unwillingly.’

’I’ll be frank in my turn.  For Hughie’s sake, I don’t think we ought to live in the town; but it’s easy enough to find healthy places just outside.’

‘I shouldn’t wish to be actually in the town,’ said Alma, her voice tremulous with pleasure.  ‘You know where the Leaches are living?’

’Yes.  Or just a little farther away, on the higher ground.  Very well, let us regard that as settled.’

‘But you, dear —­ could you live there?’