"They wouldn't come anyhow——"
"It isn't that; but they've gotten so used to your shocking them, that life would lose its savor if you couldn't achieve a fresh shock every month or two. I'm glad my new suit came——"
"As if that made any difference!"
"Ah, it will make a lot—to His Honor, for instance, and whatever reporters carry word of it to the society editresses. 'A dove-colored traveling suit,' they'll call it——"
"Wouldn't red be more appropriate?" he queried judiciously. "With the local en masse as best man, and the Suffrage Association as matron of honor——"
"Don't be horrid. I'll have Mrs. Anderson, and you can bring along your precious Lane Cullom, who is so sure that Nellie Tolliver would be much better for you."
"It's almost a Christmas wedding! We'll steal off for that week to Pascagoula and New Orleans we mentioned. We could take the Gulf Express to-morrow night—you have a time table; I brought it out last month, when we aircastled on honeymoons.... But just think, if you hadn't scorned the country club, you might have had either of the Birrell boys, or——"
"You angler! It's not too late.... No; I have the pick of the bunch."
"Jane, my ... wife." There was comfort and joy in the word.
Considering the matter alone, he was delighted he had dared the plunge. It was not easy, now, to prevent yielding to the watchful voices ever whispering to him, wakened by Dorothy Meade, refired by the rocketing affair with Louise, and now restirred by Jane herself. He had even wandered once or twice down Butler's Avenue and the furtive alleys behind, obsessed with red-lit imaginings of what went on behind those night-lighted windows. His aggressive purism had left him; love should be freely given and taken, he told himself. And it was to be his!