"I never quarrel," said Lita.
"You will some day. I expect to quarrel a lot with my wife."
"I shall never quarrel with my husband."
"No? Well, perhaps I'm wrong then."
She was angry at herself for glancing up so quickly to see what he could possibly mean by that except—he was looking at her gravely.
"Look here!" he said. "That's a mistake about Italy. You don't want to go to Italy next summer."
She was aware of two contradictory impressions during the entire journey—one that this was the most extraordinary and dramatic event, and that no heroine in fiction had ever such an adventure; and the other that it was absolutely inevitable, and that she was now for the first time a normal member of the human species.
Nothing in the whole experience thrilled her more than the calm, almost martial way in which he said as they were getting off the train at the Grand Central, "Now we'll get a taxi."
She was obliged to explain to him that they couldn't; her mother would be at the gate waiting for her—she always was.
Only this time she wasn't.