"Yes, if I put you on your defence, you'll hint----" "Through generalities----" "Yes, through generalities you'll hint, in your graceful way, that Sibylla, of whom you're very fond----" "Oh, be fair! You know I am." "Is rather--exacting--fatiguing?" "That's too strong. Rather, as I say, emotional. She likes living on the heights. I like going up there now and then. In fact I maintain the national ideal." "Yes, I think you'd do that very well--quite well enough, Grantley." "There's a sting in the tail of your praise?" "After all, I'm a woman too." "We really needn't fuss ourselves, I think. You see, she has the great saving grace--a sense of humour. If I perceive dimly that somehow something hasn't been quite what it ought to have been, that I haven't--haven't played up somehow--you know what I mean?" "Very well indeed," Mrs. Raymore laughed gently. "I can put it all right by a good laugh--a bit of mock heroics, perhaps--some good chaff, followed by a good gallop--not at all a bad prescription! After a little of that, she's laughing at herself for having the emotions, and at me for not having them, and at both of us for the whole affair." "Well, as long as it ends like that there's not much wrong. But take care. Not everything will stand the humorous aspect, you know." "Most things, thank heaven, or where should we be?" "Tom Courtland, for instance?" "Oh, not any longer, I'm afraid." "It won't do for the big things and the desperate cases; not even for other people's--much less for your own." "I suppose not. If you want it always, you must be a looker-on; and you'll tell me husbands can't be lookers-on at their own marriages?" "I tell you! Facts will convince you sooner than I could, Grantley." He was really very reasonable from his own point of view, both reasonable and patient. Mrs. Raymore conceded that. And he was also quite consistent in his point of view. She remembered a phrase from his letter which had defined what he was seeking--"a completion, not a transformation." He was pursuing that scheme still--a scheme into which the future wife had fitted so easily and perfectly, into which the actual wife fitted with more difficulty. But he was dealing with the difficulty in a very good spirit and a very good temper. If the scheme were possible at all--given Sibylla as she was--he was quite the man to put it through successfully. But she reserved her opinion as to its possibility. The reservation did not imply an approval of Sibylla or any particular inclination to champion her; it marked only a growing understanding of what Sibylla was, a growing doubt as to what she could be persuaded or moulded into becoming. Mrs. Raymore had no prejudices in her favour.