They weren't at any rate for her now.
"Dear no.
We go abroad for a few weeks somewhere of high air.
That has been before us for many days; we've only been kept on by last necessities here.
However, everything's done and the wind's in our sails."
"May you scud then happily before it!
But when," he asked, "do you come back?"
She looked ever so vague; then as if to correct it:
"Oh when the wind turns.
And what do you do with your summer?"
"Ah I spend it in sordid toil. I drench it with mercenary ink.
My work in your country counts for play as well.
You see what's thought of the pleasure your country can give.
My holiday's over."
"I'm sorry you had to take it," said Milly, "at such a different time from ours.
If you could but have worked while we've been working—"
"I might be playing while you play?
Oh the distinction isn't so great with me.
There's a little of each for me, of work and of play, in either.
But you and Mrs. Stringham, with Miss Croy and Mrs. Lowder—you all," he went on, "have been given up, like navvies or niggers, to real physical toil.
Your rest is something you've earned and you need.
My labour's comparatively light."
"Very true," she smiled; "but all the same I like mine."
"It doesn't leave you 'done'?"
"Not a bit.
I don't get tired when I'm interested.
Oh I could go far."
He bethought himself.
"Then why don't you?—since you've got here, as I learn, the whole place in your pocket."
"Well, it's a kind of economy—I'm saving things up.
I've enjoyed so what you speak of—though your account of it's fantastic—that I'm watching over its future, that I can't help being anxious and careful.
I want—in the interest itself of what I've had and may still have—not to make stupid mistakes.
The way not to make them is to get off again to a distance and see the situation from there.
I shall keep it fresh," she wound up as if herself rather pleased with the ingenuity of her statement—"I shall keep it fresh, by that prudence, for my return."
"Ah then you will return?
Can you promise one that?"
Her face fairly lighted at his asking for a promise; but she made as if bargaining a little.
"Isn't London rather awful in winter?"
He had been going to ask her if she meant for the invalid; but he checked the infelicity of this and took the enquiry as referring to social life.
"No—I like it, with one thing and another; it's less of a mob than later on; and it would have for us the merit—should you come here then—that we should probably see more of you.
So do reappear for us—if it isn't a question of climate."
She looked at that a little graver.
"If what isn't a question—?"
"Why the determination of your movements.
You spoke just now of going somewhere for that."
"For better air?"—she remembered. "Oh yes, one certainly wants to get out of London in August."
"Rather, of course!"—he fully understood. "Though I'm glad you've hung on long enough for me to catch you.
Try us at any rate," he continued, "once more."
"Whom do you mean by 'us'?" she presently asked.
It pulled him up an instant—representing, as he saw it might have seemed, an allusion to himself as conjoined with Kate, whom he was proposing not to mention any more than his hostess did.