Walter put away his iron-rimmed spectacles. I had made him promise
he would, before we were married. He had rimless pince-nez now,
which I liked much better. He had promised me also that he would
learn to dance. He had never learned; he had never wanted to
learn, he said, but now he did want to, to dance with me. Now
for a time I could not dance, and he said he would wait to learn.
When the baby was born, he would learn. Then we would both dance.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I shall be a duffer at it; perhaps you
will not like to dance with me.’
And I kissed him, and said I would.
I would rather dance with him, I said, than with Hugo; that was
what he wanted me to say, I knew, and I believed it when I said
it.
In the meantime he tried to teach me Greek. I told him how Hugo
had begun once, but we had not got on very far. He said he could
teach me better than Hugo.
‘Then we could read things together,’ he said, ‘and you could
help me a great deal too, if you would. You could look up things
for me in the Museum. You might even learn Syriac, you know;
that would be a great help.’
I thought I should like to help him in his work. I tried very
hard to learn Greek, but the lessons were more difficult than
they had been with Hugo, and Walter got annoyed if I made mistakes.
I was afraid of annoying him, and that made me afraid of the
lessons.
‘Shall we try the Syriac first?’ I suggested one day, but Walter
would not.
‘Greek first,’ he said, ‘was essential’; and so we went on.
In the evenings he took me sometimes to lectures. He belonged
to several Archæological Societies who gave lantern lectures
in the evening. Walter considered the theatre a luxury. That
seemed odd to me at first, but I did not mind, for I was happy,
and I wanted to please Walter; I wanted to fit in with his way
of life and to leave my own behind me; but one cannot do that,
ever, quite successfully, I believe.