Lydia, leaning her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands, listened while Bobby gossiped over the empty coffee cups. Did Lydia know about this Western coal man that May Swayne was going to marry? Bobby set him before her in an instant—"A round-faced man, Lydia, with $30,000,000, and such a vocabulary! He never thinks; he presumes. He doesn't come into a room; he ventures to intrude. May has quite a lot of alterations to do on him."
And the Piers—had Lydia heard about them? Fanny had fallen in love with the prophet of a new religion and had made all her arrangements to divorce Noel, but before she left him, as a proof of her new powers, she thought she'd cure him of drinking. Well, my dear, she did. And the result was she found she liked a nonalcoholic Noel better than ever—and she chucked the seer. Can you beat it?
Shadows—they did seem like shadows to Lydia. Staring before her, she fell into meditation, remembering Evans and the pale coffee-colored Muriel and the matron—the small, placid-browed matron who knew not fear.
Suddenly she came back to realize that Bobby was asking her to marry him.
Most of their acquaintances believed that he never did anything else; but as a matter of fact, it was the first time he had ever put it into words. He wasn't sure it was a tactful thing to do now. She might think—Bobby was always terribly aware of what people might think—that his suggesting such a mediocre future for her was to admit that he thought her beaten. Whereas to him she was as triumphant and desirable as ever. On the other hand, it might be just the right thing to do. With men like Albee getting to cover and some people bound to be hateful, she could say to herself, "Well, I can always marry Bobby and go to live in Italy."
He put it to her.
"Lydia, wouldn't you consider marrying me to-morrow and sailing for Greece or Sicily or Grenada—that's a heavenly place. I should be so wildly happy, dear, that I think you'd be pleased in a mild sort of way, too."
Go away? It was the last thing she wanted to do.
"No, no!" she said quickly. "I must stay here!"
"Well, marry me and stay here."