“When you came in, you were troubled.”
“When I saw you the trouble passed. I was afraid that you might be angry. I am very late.”
Marguerite did not believe one word of that explanation, but the way to discover the true one did not lie through argument. She drew Paul across the court, holding him by the hand and saying lightly:
“Foolish one, should I quarrel with you on the evening before you march away? You might never come back to me.”
She led him into a side room and drew him down beside her on the thick, low cushions. Upstairs there were chairs and tables and the paraphernalia of a western home. Here on the level of the patio and the street they had for prudence’ sake kept it all of the country. There was no brass bedstead, it is true, to ornament the room, but there were three tall grandfather clocks, though only one of them was going and that marked the true time. Marguerite laid her head in the hollow of his shoulder and her arm went round his waist.
“Paul, you won’t get killed!” she whispered. “Oh, take care! take care! I am afraid. This year has been so perfect.”
“You must have been lonely many days.”
“And many nights,” whispered Marguerite, with a little grimace. Then she laughed with the trill of a bird. “But you had just gone or you were soon returning and my thoughts were full of you. I am not difficult and thorny, am I, Paul? Say so! Say so at once!”
He laid her down so that her shoulders rested on his knee and her face smiled up at him, and bending he kissed her on the mouth for an answer.
“You are the most golden thing that ever happened in this world,” he said. “I think of all those years that I lived through, before I met you, quite contented with myself and knowing nothing—no, absolutely nothing of the great miracle.”