When it is over Violet turns her tearful eyes to her husband in mute questioning. This surely cannot be the end, the reward of love? For an instant the man's heart is thrilled with profoundest pain and pity for the hard lesson that she, like all others, must learn. He feels so helpless to answer that trust, that supreme innocence.
Everybody stirs, rises. Violet looks amazed, but he draws her hand through his arm. Several new friends nod and smile, wondering if that is Floyd Grandon's child-wife that he has so imprudently or strangely married? He hurries out a little. He does not want to speak to any one. In the crush Violet clings closely; he even takes both hands as he sees the startled look in her eyes.
The fresh, crisp air brings her back to her own world and time, but her eyes are still lustrous, her cheeks have an indescribable, delicious color, and her lips are quivering in their rose red.
"Where shall we go?" he says. "Will you have some fruit or an ice, or something more solid?"
"Oh!" and her long inspiration is almost like a sigh. "I couldn't eat anything—after that! Did they really die? Oh, if Romeo had not come so soon, quite so soon!" and her sweet, piteous voice pierces him.
"My darling, you must not take it so to heart," he entreats.
"But they were happy in that other country. And they went together," glancing up with an exquisite hope in her eyes. "It was better than to live separate. Mr. Grandon, do you know what love like that is?"
She asks it in all innocency. She would be very miserable at this moment if she thought she had come to the best love of her life. Her training has been an obedient marriage, a duty of love that is quite possible, that shall come some time hence.
"No," he says, slowly. He really dare not tell her any falsehood. He did not love Cecil's mother this way, and though he may come to love Violet with the highest and purest passion, he does not do so now. "No, my dear child, very few people do."
"But they could, they might!" and there is a ring of exultation in her tone.