was wondering," she said hesitatingly, "if it wouldn't have been
better that you should have gone."

"I? Without you, do you mean?" Rendel said. "No, certainly not. That I
am quite clear about."

"Oh, Frank, I should not like it if you did," she said, looking up at
him.

"I need not say that I should not." There was another silence.

"Should you like it very, very much?" she said.

"Like what?" said Rendel, coming back with an effort.

"Going to Africa."

There had been a moment when Rendel had told Lady Gore how glad he was
that Rachel had no ambitions, as producing the ideal character. No doubt
that lack has its advantages--but the world we live in is not, alas,
exclusively a world of ideals.

"Yes, I should like it," he replied quietly. "If you went too, that
is--I should not like it without you."

"Oh, Frank, it _is_ a pity," she said, looking up at him wistfully. But
there was evidently not in her mind the shadow of a possibility that the
question could be decided other than in one way.

"Come, it is getting late," Rendel said. And they left the room with the
outward air of having postponed the decision till the morning. But the
decision was not postponed; that Rachel took for granted, and Rendel had
made up his mind. This was, after all, not a new sacrifice he was called
upon to make: it was part of the same, of that sacrifice which he had
recognised that he was willing to make in order to marry Rachel, and
which was so much less than that other great and impossible sacrifice of
giving her up.

He came down early the next morning and wrote to Lord Belmont, meaning
when Rachel came down to breakfast to show her the letter, in which he
had most gratefully but quite decisively declined the honour that had
been done him. He read the letter over feeling as if he were in a dream,
and almost smiled to himself at the incredible thought that here was the
first big opportunity of his life and that he was calmly putting it away
from him. Perhaps when he came to talk it over with Rachel again she
might see it differently. Might she? No. He knew in his heart that she
would not. It was probable that Rendel's ambition, his determined
purpose, would always be hampered by his old-fashioned, almost quixotic
ideas of loyalty, his conception of the seemliness, the dignity of the
relations between husband and wife. In a matter that he felt was a
question of right or wrong he would probably without hesitation have
used hi