The next day they had a full talk together. He was in a very gentle, penitent humour. He said that he understood just how she had felt.
He was on his knees by her chair, in his favourite attitude, holding her waist with both arms.
She bent towards him. Her heart was very glad within her. She took his face between her hands and kissed him on the eyes.
"You see, dearest," she said, "I'm a very faithful wife. I'm Morris Loring's wife and I won't be made love to by"—she looked straight into the eyes that she had just kissed—"by John Barleycorn," she ended, smiling, to ease the tense moment for them both.
Loring dropped down his face into her lap. Then he looked up again. A dance came into his eyes, that had been ashamed for a moment.
"I'll.... I'll kill the adulterous beggar!" he murmured.
Sophy felt a sharp twinge at her heart. Were all men more or less alike, she wondered? Cecil Chesney himself might have made that remark and in just that way.
Things went well after that for some months. Loring's friends even wagged wise heads of grave foreboding over it. "Mrs. Morry's got him too rankly bitted," they agreed unanimously. "He'll rear and come over backwards if she don't look out...."
But Sophy was very moderate. She had no prudish objection to his drinking in reason. She didn't enjoy seeing him in the false high spirits engendered sometimes by extra "cocktails," but she only positively objected to the amorousness occasioned by them. He had had his lesson, however.
And as the winter wore on, and Sophy became more familiar with the social life of New York, she understood better and better this side of Loring's character. She found that there were very few young men of his "set" who did not drink as a matter of course. Very often, nearly always at balls and dances, many of them would be genially "tight" by the end of the evening. This only made them extremely noisy and "larky" as a rule. She found that the women took this state of affairs with indulgent philosophy. Often they were amused by it.