"Yes, I am fond of him," she said. "That's the word. As fond as I might be of a very nice, sound boy whom I'd known all my life."
"Is that all?"
Joan made a series of smoke rings and watched them curl into the air. "Yes, that's all," she said.
Alice became even more interested and curious and puzzled. She held very serious views about marriage. "And are you happy with him?"
"I don't know that I can be said to be happy with him," said Joan. "I'm perfectly happy as things are."
"Tell me how they are." There was obviously something here that was far from right.
Joan was amused at her friend's gravity. She had always been a responsible little person with very definite and old-fashioned views. "Well," she said, "it's a charming little story, really. I was the maiden who had to be rescued from the ugly castle, and Martin was the knight who performed the deed. And being a knight with a tremendous sense of convention and a castle of his own full of well-trained servants, it didn't seem to him that he could give me the run of his house in the Paul and Virginia manner, which isn't being done now; and so, like a little gentleman, he married me, or as I suppose you would put it, went through the form of marriage. It's all part of the adventure that we started one afternoon on the edge of the woods. I call it the cool and common-sense romance of two very modern and civilized people."
"I don't think there's any place in romance for such things as coolness and common sense," said Alice warmly. "And as to there being two very modern and civilized people in your adventure, as you call it, that I doubt."
Joan's large brown eyes grew a little larger, and she looked at the enthusiastic girl in front of her with more interest. "Do you?" she asked. "Why?"
Alice got up. She was disturbed and worried. She had a great affection for Joan, and that boy was indeed a knight. "I saw Martin walking away from your house the night you dined with Gilbert at the Brevoort—I was told about that!—and there was something in his eyes that wasn't the least bit cool. Also I rode in the Park with him one morning a week ago, and I thought he looked ill and haggard and—if you must know—starved. No one would say that you aren't modern and civilized,—and those are tame words,—but if Martin were to come in now and make a clean breast of it, you'd be surprised to find how little he is of either of those things, if I know anything about him."