The morning found Arnott recovered from his overnight depression; and
Pamela's determination to inquire into things was less positive than on
the previous evening. On reflection she decided to wait a little
longer. Perhaps if she waited he would broach the matter himself. It
might be that she was exaggerating the importance of this thing. In any
case she would exercise patience and see what the next mail day brought
forth; if his letters caused him annoyance again she would ask him to
confide in her the nature of this worry which, while not allowed to
share it, was becoming her trouble too. She could not look on and see
him bothered without feeling bothered in a measure also; and her entire
ignorance as to the nature of the trouble was worrying of itself.
Pamela held modern ideas as to a wife's right to share her husband's
confidence. Marriage unless a mental as well as a physical union was no
marriage in her opinion. She desired to face life at her husband's
side, and take all that it offered fearlessly, the bad as well as the
good. It had been all good up to the present; but no sky is always
cloudless: eternal sunshine would dry up the generous fountains of life,
as unbroken happiness will narrow the sympathies and shrivel the best
emotions of the heart. Pamela had a healthy appreciation of the blue
skies, but she was not in the least afraid of the rain. So long as she
had her husband's love, so long as they were together, she believed that
she could meet any trouble, bear any sorrow bravely in the strengthening
knowledge of his great love for her.
So long as they were together... She dwelt on that thought, smiling and
confident. They were together, that was very certain; it seemed equally
certain that nothing could happen to separate them. It was indeed such
an assured impossibility that she encouraged herself to consider it for
the pleasure of proving its absurdity. Herbert, himself, had declared
that only death could divide them; and at twenty-six death looms very
indistinct along the vista of years.
Wandering in the garden, waiting for her husband who was going to motor
her out to Sea Point, Pamela speculated on these things with the easy
optimism natural to her, and indulged the happy conceit of creating
purely imaginary and highly impossible situations for the satisfaction
of filling them effectively,--a habit of make-believe which endured from
schoolroom days. The appearance of the postman in the drive awoke her
from her dreaming to the realisation that the morning was slipping away.
Something must be detaining Herbert, possibly something to do with the
car.