"I gave my word. They knew that was enough," she said proudly;
adding, as if to put him in full possession of her reasons: "It
would have been much more difficult for me to obtain complete
control of my son if it had not been understood that I was to live
in France."

"That seems fair," Durham assented after a moment's reflection: it
was his instinct, even in the heat of personal endeavour, to pause a
moment on the question of "fairness." The personal claim reasserted
itself as he added tentatively: "But when he _is_ brought up--when
he's grown up: then you would feel freer?"

She received this with a start, as a possibility too remote to have
entered into her view of the future. "He is only eight years old!"
she objected.

"Ah, of course it would be a long way off?"

"A long way off, thank heaven! French mothers part late with their
sons, and in that one respect I mean to be a French mother."

"Of course--naturally--since he has only you," Durham again
assented.

He was eager to show how fully he took her point of view, if only to
dispose her to the reciprocal fairness of taking his when the time
came to present it. And he began to think that the time had now
come; that their walk would not have thus resolved itself, without
excuse or pretext, into a tranquil session beneath the trees, for
any purpose less important than that of giving him his opportunity.