'But you were made for luxurious living,' was Walter's quick reply. 'You never looked at home in the old place. This suits you down to the ground.'
'Do you think so?' Gladys gave a little melancholy smile. 'Yet so contradictory are we, that sometimes I am not at all happy nor contented here, Walter.'
'You ought to be very happy,' he replied a trifle sharply. 'You have everything a woman needs to make her happy.'
'Perhaps so, and yet'—
She paused, and hummed a little scrap of song which Walter did not catch.
'I am becoming quite an accomplished violinist, Walter,' she said presently. 'I have two lessons every week; once Herr Döller comes down, and once I go up. Would you like to hear me play, or shall we talk?'
'I don't know. It would really be better for me to go away. I can walk to the station; the walk will do me good.'
'I will not allow you to walk nor go away, Walter, even if you are as cross as two sticks; and I must say I feel rather cross myself.'
They were playing with edged tools, and Gladys was keenly conscious of it. Her pulses were throbbing, her heart beating as it had never beat in the presence of the man to whom she had plighted her troth that very day. A very little more, and she must have given way to hysterical sobbing, she felt so overwrought; and yet all the while she kept on her lips that gay little smile, and spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world that they should be together. But when Walter remained silent, she came forward to the hearth quickly, and, forgetting that what was fitting in the old days was not permissible in the new, she slipped on one knee on the rug, and suddenly, laying her head down on his knee, began to cry.
'Gladys, get up! For God's sake, get up, or I can't hold my tongue. This is fearful!'