I have been playing golf quite superbly."Edith banged the door behind her, and they heard her shrilly whistling as she went off down the passages.
Then Dodo turned to Jack.
"Jack, dear, I thought I should burst when Edith kissed you," she said. "You half shut your eyes and screwed up your face like a dog that is just going to be whipped. But I love Edith. Now come and sit here and talk. I have hardly seen you, since—well, since we settled that we should see a good deal more of each other in the future. I want you to tell me, oh, such lots of things. How often a month on the average have you thought about me during all these years? Jack, dear, I want to be wanted, so much."
"You have always been wanted by me," he said. "It is more a question of how many minutes in the month I haven't thought about you. They are easily counted."
He sat down on the sofa by her, as her hand indicated.
"Dodo," he said, "I don't make demands of you, except that you should be yourself. But I do want that. We are all made differently: if we were not the world would be a very stupidly simple affair. And you must know that in one respect anyhow I am appallingly simple. I have never cared for any woman except you. That is the fact. Let us have it out between us just once. I have never worn my heart on my sleeve, for any woman to pluck at, and carry away a mouthful of. There are no bits missing, I assure you. It is all there, and it is all yours. It is in no way the worse for wear, because it has had no wear. I feel as if—"
Jack paused a moment: he knew the meaning of his thought, but found it not so easy to make expression of it.
"I feel as if I had been sitting all my life at a window in my heart," he said, "looking out, and waiting for you to come by. But you had to come by alone. You came by once with my cousin. You came by a second time with Waldenech. You were bored the first time, you were frightened the second time. But you were not alone. I believe you are alone now: I believe you look up to my window. Ah, how stupid all language is! As if you looked up to it!"
Dodo was really moved, and when she spoke her voice was unsteady.
"I do look up to it, Jack," she said. "Oh, my dear, how the world would laugh at the idea of a woman already twice married, having romance still in front of her. But there is romance, Jack. You see—you see you have run through my life just as a string runs through a necklace of pearls or beads: beads perhaps is better—yet I don't know. Chesterford gave me pearls, all the pearls. A necklace of pearls before swine shall we say? I was swine, if you understand. But you always ran through it all, which sounds as if I meant you were a spendthrift, but you know what I do mean. Really I wonder if anybody ever made a worse mess of her life than I have done, and found it so beautifully cleaned up in the middle. But there you were—I ought to have married you originally: I ought to have married you unoriginally. But I never trusted my heart. You might easily tell me that I hadn't got one, but I had. I daresay it was a very little one, so little that I thought it didn't matter. I suppose I was like the man who swore something or other on the crucifix, and when he broke his oath, he said the crucifix was such a small one."
She paused again.
"Jack, are you sure?" she asked. "I want you to have the best life that you can have. Are you sure you give yourself the best chance with me? My dear, there will be no syllable of reproach, on my lips or in my mind, if you reconsider. You ought to marry a younger woman than me. You will be still a man at sixty, I shall be just a thing at fifty-eight."
Dodo took a long breath and stood up.
"Marry Nadine," she said. "She is so like what I was: you said it yourself. And she hasn't been battered like me. I think she would marry you. I know how fond she is of you, anyhow, and the rest will follow. I can't bear to think of you pushing my Bath chair. God knows, I have spoiled many of your years. But, God knows, I don't want to spoil more of them. She will give you all that I could have given you twenty years ago. Ah, my dear, the years. How cruel they are! How they take away from us all that we want most! You love children, for instance, Jack. Perhaps I shall not be able to give you children. Nadine is twenty-one. That is a long time ago. You should consider. I said 'yes' to you yesterday, but perhaps I had not thought about it sufficiently. I have thought since. Before you came down to Meering I was awake so long one night, wondering why you came. I was quite prepared that it should be Nadine you wanted. And, oh, how gladly I would give Nadine to you, instead of giving myself: I should see: I should understand. At first I thought that I should not like it, that I should be jealous, to put it quite frankly, of Nadine. But somehow now that I know that your first desire was for me, I am jealous no longer. Take Nadine, Jack! I want you to take Nadine. It will be better. We know each other well enough to trust each other, and now that I tell you that there will be nothing but rejoicing left in my heart, if you want Nadine, you must believe that I tell you the entire truth. I know very well about Nadine. She will not marry Hugh. She wants somebody who has a bigger mind. She wants also to put Hugh out of the question. She does not mean to marry him, and she would like it to be made impossible. Woo Nadine, dear Jack, and win her. She will give you all I could once have given you, all that I ought to have given you."
At that moment Dodo was making the great renunciation of her life. She had been completely stirred out of herself and she pleaded against her own cause. She was quite sincere and she wanted Jack's happiness more than her own. She believed even while she renounced all claim on him, that her best chance of happiness was with him, for it had taken her no time at all to make up her mind when he proposed to her yesterday. And she had not exaggerated when just now she told him that he ran through her life like a string that keeps the beads of time in place. She had never felt for another man what she had felt for him, and her declaration of his freedom was a real renunciation, made impulsively but most generously and completely. She really meant it, and she did not pause to consider that the offer was one of which no man could conceivably take advantage. And Jack felt and knew her sincerity.
"You are absolutely free, my dear," she said. "Absolutely! And I will come to your wedding, and dance at it if you like, for joy that you are happy."
He got up too.
"There will be no wedding unless you come to it," he said. "Dance at it, Dodo, but marry me. Nobody else will do."
Dodo looked him full in the face.
"Edith was quite right to remind you of—of what I have done," she said.
"And I am quite right to forget it," said he.
She shook her head, smiling a little tremulously.
"Oh, Jack," she said in a sigh.
He took her close to him.
"My beloved," he said, and kissed her.
Chapter V
Dodo's wedding, which took place at the end of July in Westminster Abbey, was a very remarkable and characteristic affair. In the first place she arrived so late that people began to wonder whether she was going to throw Jack over again, this time at the very last moment. Jack himself did not share these misgivings and stood at the west door rather hot and shy but quite serene, waiting till his bride should come. Eventually Nadine who was to have come with her mother appeared in a taxi going miles above the legal limit, with the information that Dodo was in floods of tears because she had been so horrible to Jack before, and wanted to be so nice now. She said she would stop crying as soon as she possibly could, but
