"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.

Man has an odd trick of falling in love with the last kind of woman you would expect him to, the very ant.i.thesis of the ideal he has previously formulated to himself, and then of expecting her, after matrimony, suddenly to change her whole individuality--the very individuality which attracted him in the first instance--and conform to his preconceived notions of what a wife ought to he.

It is illogical, of course, with that gloriously pig-headed illogicalness not infrequently to be found in the supposedly logical s.e.x, and it would be laughable were it not that it so often ends in tragedy.

So that Roger was quite genuinely dumbfounded at Nan's heterodox p.r.o.nouncement on the relative values of music and babies.

A baby was not in the least an object of absorbing interest to her. It cried out of tune and made ear-piercing noises that were not included in even the most modern of compositions. Moreover, she was not by nature of the maternal type of woman, to whom marriage is but the beautiful path which leads to motherhood. She was essentially one of the lovers of the world. Had she married her mate, she would have demanded nothing more of life, though, if a child had been born of such mating, it would have seemed to her so beautiful and sure a link, so blent with love itself, that her arms would have opened to receive it.

But of all these intricacies of the feminine heart and mind Roger was sublimely ignorant. So he chided her, still with that same unwonted gentleness which the thought of fatherhood sometimes brings to men of strong and violent temper.

"That's all nonsense, you know, sweetheart. And some day . . . when there's a small son to be thought about and planned for and loved, you'll find that what I say is true."

"It might chance to be a small daughter," suggested Nan snubbily, and Roger's face fell a little. "So, meanwhile, as I haven't a baby and I _have_ a concerto, come along and listen to it."

He nodded and followed her into the West Parlour. A cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth, a big lounge chair drawn up invitingly beside it, while close at hand stood a small table with pipe, tobacco pouch, and matches lying on it in readiness.

Roger smiled at the careful arrangement.

"What a thoughtful child it's becoming!" he commented, taking up his pipe.

"Well, you can listen to music much better if you're really comfy,"

said Nan. "Sit down and light your pipe--there, I'll light it for you when you've finished squashing the 'baccy down into it."

Roger dropped leisurely into the big chair, filled and lit his pipe, and when it was drawing well, stretched out his legs to the logs' warm glow with a sigh of contentment.

"Now, fire away, sweetheart," he said. "I'm all attention."

She looked across at him, feeling for the first time a little anxious and uncertain of the success of her plan.

"Of course, it'll sound very bald--just played on the piano," she explained carefully. "You'll have to try and imagine the difference the orchestral part makes."

Switching off the lights, so that nothing but the flickering glow of the fire illumined the room, she began to play.

For half an hour she played on, lost to all thoughts of the world around her, wrapped in the melody and meaning of the music. Then, as the _finale_ rushed in a torrent of golden chords to its climax and the last note was struck, her hands fell away from the piano and she sank back on her seat with a little sigh of exhaustion and happiness.

A pause followed. How well she remembered listening for that pause when she played, in public!--The brief, pulsating silence which falls while the thought of the audience steal back from the fairyland whither they have wandered and readjust themselves reluctantly to the things of daily life. And then, the outburst of applause.

In silence she awaited Roger's approval, her lips just parted, her face still alight with the joy of the creator who knows that his work is good.

But the words for which she was listening did not come. . . .

Instead--utter silence! . . . Wondering, half apprehensive of she knew not what, Nan twisted round on the music-seat and looked across to where Roger was sitting. The sharp, quick intake of her breath broke the silence as might a cry. Weary after his long day in the saddle, soothed by the warmth of the fire and the rhythm of the music, Roger was sleeping peacefully, his head thrown back against a cushion!

Nan rose slowly and, coming forward into the circle of the firelight, stared down at him incredulously. It was unbelievable! She had been giving him all the best that was in her--the work of her brain, the interpretation of her hands--baring her very heart to him during the last half-hour. And he had slept through it all!

In any other circ.u.mstances, probably, the humorous side of the matter would have struck her, and the sting and smart of it been washed away in laughter.

But just now it was impossible for her to feel anything but bitterness and hopeless disappointment. For weeks she had been working hard, without the fillip of congenial atmosphere, doggedly sticking to it in spite of depression and discouragement, and now that the results of her labour were ready to be given to the world, she was strung up to a high pitch and ill-prepared to receive a sudden check.

She had counted so intensely on winning Roger's sympathy and understanding--on putting an end to that blundering, terrible jealousy of his by playing the game to the limit of her ability. It had been like making a burnt-offering for her to share the thing she loved best with Roger--to let him into some of the secret places where dwelt her inmost dreams and emotions. And she had nerved herself to do it, made her sacrifice--in vain! Roger was even unconscious that it was a sacrifice!

She looked down at him as he lay with the firelight flickering across his strong-featured face, and a storm of fury and indignation swept over her. She could have struck him!

Presently he stirred uneasily. Perhaps he felt the cessation of the music, the sense of someone moving in the room. A moment later he opened his eyes and saw her standing beside him.

"You, darling?" he murmured drowsily. He stretched his arms. "I think . . . I've been to sleep." Then, recollection returning to him: "By Jove! And you were playing to me--"