“No—­” he said presently, “we must face the thing honestly.  And perhaps it’s better so.  I want to speak to you about my marriage.  I was twenty-five, and Lillian eighteen.  I had come to the city, a seventeen-year-old boy, to make my fortune, and it was after the first small success that we met.  She was an heiress—­a sweet, pretty, spoiled little girl; she is just a little girl now in many ways.  It was a very extraordinary marriage for her to wish to make; her mother disapproved; her guardians disapproved.  I promised the mother to go away, and I did, but Lillian had an illness a month or two later and they sent for me, and we were married.  Her mother has always regarded me as of secondary importance in her daughter’s life; she took charge of our house, and of the baby when Julie came, and went right on with her spoiling and watching and exulting in Lillian.  They took trips abroad; they decided whether or not to open the town house; they paid all the bills.  Lillian has her suite of rooms, and I mine.  Julie is very prettily fond of me; they like to give a big tea, two or three times a winter, and have me in evidence, or Lillian likes to have me plan theatricals, or manage amateur grand-opera for her.  When Julie was about ten I had my own ideas as to her upbringing, but there was a painful scene, in which the child herself was consulted, and stood with her mother and grandmother—­

“So, for several years, Susan, it has been only the decent outer shell of a marriage.  We sometimes live in different cities for months at a time, or live in the same house, and see no more of each other than guests in the same hotel.  Lillian makes no secret of it; she would be glad to be free.  We have never had a day, never an hour, of real companionship!  My dear Sue—­” his voice, which had been cold and bitter, softened suddenly, and he turned to her the sudden winning smile that she remembered noticing the first evening they had known each other.  “My dear Sue,” he said, “when I think what I have missed in life I could go mad!  When I think what it would be to have beside me a comrade who liked what I like, who would throw a few things into a suit case, and put her hand in mine, and wander over the world with me, laughing and singing through Italy, watching a sudden storm from the doorway of an English inn—­”

“Ah, don’t!” Susan said wistfully.

“You have never seen the Canadian forests, Sue, on some of the tropical beaches, or the color in a japanese street, or the moon rising over the Irish lakes!” he went on, “and how you would love it all!”,

“We oughtn’t—­oughtn’t to talk this way—­“, Susan said unsteadily.

They were crossing a field, above the town, and came now to a little stile.  Susan sat down on the little weather-burned step, and stared down on the town below.  Bocqueraz leaned on the rail, and looked at her.

“Always—­always—­always,” he pursued seriously.  “I have known that you were somewhere in the world.  Just you, a bold and gay and witty and beautiful woman, who would tear my heart out by the roots when I met you, and shake me out of my comfortable indifference to the world and everything in it.  And you have come!  But, Susan, I never knew, I never dreamed what it would mean to me to go away from you, to leave you in peace, never guessing—­”