‘I am passably rich, Nevil,’ she said.  ’I do not care for money, except that it gives wings.  Roland inherits the chateau in Touraine.  I have one in Burgundy, and rentes and shares, my notary informs me.’

‘I have money,’ said he.  His heart began beating violently.  He lost sight of his intention of reasoning.  ‘Good God! if you were free!’

She faltered:  ‘At Tourdestelle . . .’

‘Yes, and I am unchanged,’ Beauchamp cried out.  ’Your life there was horrible, and mine’s intolerable.’  He stretched his arms cramped like the yawning of a wretch in fetters.  That which he would and would not became so intervolved that he deemed it reasonable to instance their common misery as a ground for their union against the world.  And what has that world done for us, that a joy so immeasurable should be rejected on its behalf?  And what have we succeeded in doing, that the childish effort to move it should be continued at such a cost?

For years, down to one year back, and less—­yesterday, it could be said—­all human blessedness appeared to him in the person of Renee, given him under any condition whatsoever.  She was not less adorable now.  In her decision, and a courage that he especially prized in women, she was a sweeter to him than when he was with her in France:  too sweet to be looked at and refused.

‘But we must live in England,’ he cried abruptly out of his inner mind.

‘Oh! not England, Italy, Italy!’ Renee exclaimed:  ’Italy, or Greece:  anywhere where we have sunlight.  Mountains and valleys are my dream.  Promise it, Nevil.  I will obey you; but this is my wish.  Take me through Venice, that I may look at myself and wonder.  We can live at sea, in a yacht; anywhere with you but in England.  This country frowns on me; I can hardly fetch my breath here, I am suffocated.  The people all walk in lines in England.  Not here, Nevil!  They are good people, I am sure; and it is your country:  but their faces chill me, their voices grate; I should never understand them; they would be to me like their fogs eternally; and I to them?  O me! it would be like hearing sentence in the dampness of the shroud perpetually.  Again I say I do not doubt that they are very good:  they claim to be; they judge others; they may know how to make themselves happy in their climate; it is common to most creatures to do so, or to imagine it.  Nevil! not England!’

Truly ‘the mad commander and his French marquise’ of the Bevisham Election ballad would make a pretty figure in England!

His friends of his own class would be mouthing it.  The story would be a dogging shadow of his public life, and, quite as bad, a reflection on his party.  He heard the yelping tongues of the cynics.  He saw the consternation and grief of his old Bevisham hero, his leader and his teacher.

‘Florence,’ he said, musing on the prospect of exile and idleness:  ‘there’s a kind of society to be had in Florence.’