He frowned. "To tell you the truth I hate to feel that I'm a--a sort of
a crocodile to you."
In spite of herself Rachel laughed hysterically. "I often think I must
be almost that to you!" she replied.
He hesitated; a strange feeling had taken possession of him, the old
landmarks were being swept away, he no longer belonged to the false
and trivial world that had once been his only idea of life. He was
shipwrecked, but across the sea he seemed to catch glimpses of a
lovelier, saner existence,--"he who loses his life shall find it."
More than once lately he had remembered the words though he could not
remember where he had seen them. But he had not the courage to say any
of these things to his wife.
"I wish you'd let me take you away; you'd be as free of my society
as you are here,--more so, for we wouldn't be so observed by our
friends,--and I think the change would be a blessing to you."
Rachel blushed slightly again. "Thank you," she said quite gently,
"but--I just can't--not now. Later I'd like to go to Boston. I think
you belong to clubs there, don't you? And I could get a chance to go
out to Cambridge; my aunt is coming back and--and I'd like to go there
to her."
He faced her without coming a step nearer, but with a new and quite
humble air. "I wish you'd feel that I really want to please you," he
said.
She looked down at the trowel in her hands and saw the marks of
the earth on her fingers. "Thank you," she said, almost shyly, and
went away from him across the lawn, and he saw her, a moment later,
disappear into the house.
"She's a good sport," he said to himself, in the language that was most
familiar to him, "a downright good sport, and I've been a beastly cad."