"Tell me about it," she said at last.
Herrick smiled. "She's straightening out all the misery and sin and ugliness in the world, Kittycat, and it keeps her rather busy."
They talked for a while of Jean and the little doctor and the futile, foolish tasks at which they labored.
"It makes me tired to think of so much energy." The Kitten yawned. "I'm glad I have no 'work.' I wouldn't 'improve' a single living human being, even if I could, not even you, Boy Blue."
"Most wise Kitty." Herrick drew her to him and kissed her passionately.
The next day they slipped away for the week-end to the cabin on the Portuguese ranch where he and Jean had spent their honeymoon.
"It was the first place we ever went, Boy, and I want to go there again," insisted The Kitten. After a moment's hesitation Herrick agreed.
The dairyman and his wife showed no surprise. They were as dark, as silent as ever. The woman wore the same bright red skirt and the same dirty white waist. She brought food to the cabin as she had brought it before, without a word. There was the same full, silver moonlight brimming the bowl of the little canyon, and the same quiet cows wandering over the hills.
They stayed two days and went back. Herrick wondered what he would say if Jean had already returned, and gravitated, according to his mood, from a lie he knew would not deceive her, to the truth.
But Jean had not come. Nor did she come the next day, nor the next. For the Mayor of Belgrave had a cold. Years afterwards, Herrick speculated sometimes, what his life would have been, if James Martin, Mayor of Belgrave, had not had a cold.