Six minutes had elapsed. “I wish,” said Maurice very low in his mind, “I wish I could die, right now!” Tempus, edax amoris!
II
She had said “No!” six times. Consider her age! Consider that she was a music-teacher and suffered from indigestion! Consider, moreover, that the author of her being had failed to give her any last name and here was her opportunity to fill the gap! This, then, was certainly an heroic defense of an untenable position. At the seventh time of asking, she capitulated—more to be pitied than blamed.
She sang with a voice of serene sweetness. Otherwise she was a creature of alluring silences. They fascinated Maurice. He was sure that behind her white forehead beautiful, mysterious thoughts were evolving. Perhaps that was so. Evolution is a notoriously slow process. On the other hand, behind that white forehead there may have been merely one full portion of the great cosmic void. Judging her by what she verbally disclosed, her rating under the Binet test was D−.
She was not a well woman. Besides indigestion, she was suffering from another chronic illness, detropitis. She did not know it yet. She had not met Maurice’s other half. She was his better half, but Edith was his other half—a very different thing.
Edith and Maurice were fashioned for each other. They had been so carefully forged and shaped that they fitted each other like a pair of scissors. Anything that came between them was—de trop and likely to get hurt.
Moreover, she was, unknowingly, now exposing herself to her final, her fatal malady. The place of their fifty-four minute honeymoon had been rashly, inconsiderately chosen. This riverside paradise was unlucky for her. Death was already shaking the bones for the final throw—though its double-sixes did not fall for ten years. All in all, she was not a well woman.
III
Maurice’s Uncle Henry and Aunt Mary took them in until Maurice could get a job. Uncle Henry’s wife counted every cigar he smoked, yet he maintained his cheerfulness. He reminded one somewhat of Mark Tapley, somewhat of Moses, but mostly of William James—the Pragmatic Sanction justified everything to him.
Aunt Mary was of distinguished lineage, descendant of the late Lydia Pinkham and of the late Ralph Waldo Emerson. She inherited the Pinkham physique, the Emerson mentality.