"No, dearest, you don't quite understand; and you are a little disappointed in me because I seem--I must seem--rather flippant. I daren't be serious--I daren't. I daren't believe that I am your wife." "But why not?" She shook her head, and her whole face became clouded by the old, terrible, unnatural sadness which he knew so much better than her laughter. "I am not used to joy," she said. "Perhaps, if we ever get to Heaven, our first impulse will be to run back again to Purgatory, where we are more at home!" "You have too much wit, darling, to be happy anywhere!" "No! no! I don't ask to be conventionally happy, but I want you always. That is all ... you, always, on any terms--on a rag-heap, in a storm, with jackals howling at us!" "What a picture!" "My idea of unalloyed bliss, or, at least, the only one I have ever permitted myself. I can even believe that might be realised." A smile hovered again about her lips, but she looked steadily ahead, as though she were still resolved not to reassure herself, by any too-frequent glances, of his much-loved presence. The peculiar tenderness of her voice was in itself a charm against ill-humour. A rush of bitter self-reproach told Robert that his dissatisfaction had been the inevitable result of too many blessings on a base nature. He tried to speak; he watched instead, with a desperate, eager gaze, the play of her expressive features. "I wonder," she said, "what our life is to be? Not that I wish to pry into the future, but, for some reason, I can never feel settled. Every morning is a surprise. I think, too, about your character ... your career. Have I helped you, or have I been a hindrance? I am perverse, capricious--not an angel. No human influence can help me very much. I must depend on the discipline of God. Oh, if I could know all that He wants me to do!" "Most of us have that desire, Brigit. At least it is better to be damned, in the world's opinion, trying to do the will of God than saved--doing nothing! One has to take a good many chances--even the chance of displeasing Him--if it comes to a crisis." "Many people would call that reckless." "Let them call it anything," said the young man; "names do not matter. The ghastly, unspeakable dread is to be timorous, halting, the creature of indecision." "We are too much alike," she sighed. "Oh, Robert, if we did not suffer horribly within ourselves when we do wrong, I believe we should both defy every law in the world! I am a born rebel." More than a note of her mother's insolence was in the speech, but the whole spirit of the dead actress seemed to possess Brigit for that moment. Her being rippled, as it were, with the new disturbance, just as a pond will tremble to its edges at the mere dip of a swallow's wing. The artistic hatred of all restraint and the wild desire of liberty were the imperious passions of her heart--more vehement than any other feeling--even her love for Orange.