Clifford felt her conviction, and somehow he believed her, he believed it was for him. He felt immensely relieved, joyful at once.
“In that case,” he said, “I think it would be all right, don’t you?”
“I think so,” she said.
“You’d enjoy the change?”
She looked up at him with strange blue eyes.
“I should like to see Venice again,” she said, “and to bathe from one of the shingle islands across the lagoon. But you know I loathe the Lido! And I don’t fancy I shall like Sir Alexander Cooper and Lady Cooper. But if Hilda is there, and we have a gondola of our own: yes, it will be rather lovely. I do wish you’d come.”
She said it sincerely. She would so love to make him happy, in these ways.
“Ah, but think of me, though, at the Gare du Nord: at Calais quay!”
“But why not? I see other men carried in litter-chairs, who have been wounded in the war. Besides, we’d motor all the way.”
“We should need to take two men.”
“Oh no! We’d manage with Field. There would always be another man there.”
But Clifford shook his head.
“Not this year, dear! Not this year! Next year probably I’ll try.”
She went away gloomily. Next year! What would next year bring? She herself did not really want to go to Venice: not now, now there was the other man. But she was going as a sort of discipline: and also because, if she had a child, Clifford could think she had a lover in Venice.