"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.