Mary went into her room to put on her things, but her fingers trembled so that their pins and their buttons were almost too much for her. After all that had happened James still loved her, and she loved him again. The resentment that had lain so heavy on her, the doubt that had stifled her, were gone. He loved her, and she could respond with joy to his kiss. She looked at herself in the glass and smiled happily. The soft appeal of her youth was gone; no other man would ever care for her now, but James cared.
She heard the door open and turned towards it. Again it was James. His eyes were bright and he was holding out his hands. "My dear," he said, "I'm impatient, I can't lose sight of you!"
In another moment he was bending over her, kissing her soft hair. "James!" she said, but she did not go on; instead she found herself crying on his shoulder.
James held her more closely. "Cry away, little thing!" he told her, "I really believe that you are fond of me!"
She raised her face for a kiss. She was fond of him, but she knew that it was not that that had made her cry. Her tears were for her vanished youth and its young, foolish love.
In the taxi on the way back James held her hand and told her how much he had missed her, and how all his schemes had lost their savour without his old darling there to encourage him. She must promise to encourage him in every possible way when he made his appeal to the terrible elector. She must sit on his platform at meetings and smile at his workers in her own irresistible way and be in the Ladies' Gallery when he made his speeches. It was part of James's charm that he never said pretty things without meaning them, and Mary listened to him in a state of glad confusion. Underneath her content, she knew, there was something else, some question unsatisfied, but this was not the time for attending to it. This was simply the time for being happy—she had earned her right to be as happy as she could. She lay against James's shoulder and sighed with happiness. "We're home now," he said, as the taxi turned into the square, "and do you know, from the moment you cross the doorstep all this great adventure of yours will sink away like a dream!" She did not agree with him, but she forebore to shake her head. The taxi stopped—there were the familiar steps, in a moment she would see the servant's familiar face. The entrance hall was more like a dream, she thought, in its tall ugliness, than the queer red and orange room that they had left to the windy night. But she was glad to see her house again, her ordinary house.
On the table in the hall lay a letter from Rosemary. "There's no time to dress," James called after her as she carried it up the stairs. "Dinner's ready and I've some work to do afterwards." She made him some answer, and escaped to her room.
The letter was short.
"MY DARLING MOTHER,
"I just wanted to tell you how extraordinarily happy we are. It's ridiculous that everybody can't always be as happy as this.
Your loving
ROSEMARY."
Here was a rosy world! Here, if she wanted it, she could seek her youth! Then she sighed. Would Rosemary, she wondered, wake at last from her dreams as she had done, or were things different now, did one never, now, forget the world in love? She must not dawdle, she reminded herself. James was waiting! Mary washed her hands and went downstairs.