"Oh!" said Cordelia coldly, vaguely; and all that evening Hartley wondered what unknown trouble was weighing upon her spirit. As at other times when similar inscrutable phases of her character had flashed before him, he let the teasing little mystery of the moment pass without attempting to probe more deeply into it. For he remembered that the real key to her inner and truer self lay between the covers of her first book, The Silver Poppy.
CHAPTER XII
EROS THE RELUCTANT
So many dreams must fail us, dear,
So many springs to autumn turn,
Let us, in one memorial year,
Learn all there is of love to learn.
John Hartley, "Pale Souls."
A husband's jealousies, my dear, are the mushrooms on the beefsteak of matrimony.—"The Silver Poppy."
"My dear, are you falling in love?"
It was Mrs. Spaulding who suddenly asked this of Cordelia, tumbling a lump of sugar into the depths of her coffee-cup as a figure and symbol of some vaster emotional descent.