"Why did he go?
Was it something I said?--something he found out or imagined?"
Parting had disappeared as a possible solution of this problem. She and
he had got into each other's lives to stay: the real problem was
the terms upon which they were to stay in each other's lives. Close
association had brought them to the point of being, in the completest
sense, lovers; that could not be; and the real problem was the
transmutation of their relationship to some form compatible with his
honour and her happiness. A word, an idea, from some recent reading
floated into Sir Richmond's head. "Sublimate," he whispered. "We have
to sublimate this affair. We have to put this relationship upon a Higher
Plane."
His mind stopped short at that.
Presently his voice sounded out of the depths of his heart. "God! How I
loathe the Higher Plane!....
"God has put me into this Higher Plane business like some poor little
kid who has to wear irons on its legs."
"I WANT her.... Do you hear, Martin? I want her."
As if by a lightning flash he saw his car with himself and Miss
Grammont--Miss Seyffert had probably fallen out--traversing Europe and
Asia in headlong flight. To a sunlit beach in the South Seas....
His thoughts presently resumed as though these unmannerly and fantastic
interruptions had not occurred.
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