"Have you given the landscape contract?"

"Yes. And please go out. You make my head ache."

"How much is it to be?"

"I don't know. Ask Rodney."

"I'll do nothing of the sort, my dear. This is not Rodney's investment."

"Nor mine, I suppose!"

"All I want you to do, Natalie, is to consult me. I want you to have a

free hand, but some one with a sense of responsibility ought to check up

these expenditures. But it isn't only that. I'd like to have a hand in

the thing myself. I've rather looked forward to the time when we could

have the sort of country place we wanted."

"You don't like any of the strings to get out of your fingers, do you?"

"I didn't come up to quarrel, Natalie. I wish you wouldn't force it on

me."

"I force it on you," she cried, and laughed in a forced and high-pitched

note. "Just because I won't be over-ridden without a protest! I'm

through, that's all. I shan't go near the place again."

"You don't understand," he persisted patiently. "I happen to like

gardens. I had an idea--I told you about it--of trying to duplicate

the old garden at home. You remember it. When we went there on our

honeymoon--"

"You don't call that a garden?"

"Of course I didn't want to copy it exactly. It was old and out of

condition. But there were a lot of old-fashioned flowers---However, if

you intend to build an Italian villa, naturally--"

"I don't intend to build anything, or to plant anything." Her voice

was frozen. "You go ahead. Do it in your own way. And then you can live

there, if you like. I won't."

Which was what he carried away with him that morning to the mill. He was

not greatly disturbed by her threat to keep her hands off. He knew

quite well, indeed, that the afternoon would find her, with Rodney Page,

picking her way in her high-heeled shoes over the waste that was some

day to bloom, not like the rose of his desire but according to the

formal and rigid blueprint which Rodney would be carrying. But in five

minutes he had put the incident out of his mind. After all, if it gave

her happiness and occupation, certainly she needed both. And his powers

of inhibition were strong. For many years he had walled up the small

frictions of his married life and its disappointments, and outside that

wall had built up an existence of his own, which was the mill.




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