"It's saying: 'Hurry up, you silly children, down there! Don't you know that life is a minute and youth a second?'" And now both his arms were round her and one of her hands lay upon his shoulder.
"Life a minute—youth a second," she murmured.
"Do you think I'd scratch you horribly if I kissed you—Rita?"
She lowered her eyes but not her face. "You might try—Josh."
CHAPTER XXIV
"OUR HOUSE IS AFIRE"
Next morning she was up and in her dressing-room and had almost finished her toilette before he awakened. For the first time in years—perhaps the first time since the end of her happy girlhood and the beginning of her first season in Washington society—she felt like singing. Was there ever such a dawn? Did ever song of birds sound so like the voice of eternal youth? Whence had come this air like the fumes from the winepresses of the gods? And the light! What colors, what tints, upon mountain and valley and halcyon lake! And the man asleep in the next room—yes, there WAS a Joshua Craig whom she found extremely trying at times; but that Joshua Craig had somehow resigned the tenancy of the strong, straight form there, had resigned it to a man who was the living expression of all that bewitched her in these wilds.
She laughed softly at her own ecstasy of exaggeration. "The other Josh will come back," she reminded herself, "and I must not forget to be practical. THIS is episodic." These happy, superhuman episodes would come, would pass, would recur at intervals; but the routine of her life must be lived. And if these episodes were to recur the practical must not be neglected. "It's by neglecting the practical that so many wives come to grief," reflected she. And the first mandate of the practical was that he must be rescued from that vulgar political game, which meant poverty and low associations and tormenting uncertainties. He must be got where his talents would have their due, their reward. But subtly guiding him into the way that would be best for him was a far different matter from what she had been planning up to last night's moonrise—was as abysmally separated from its selfish hypocrisy as love from hate. She would persist in her purpose, but how changed the motive!
She heard him stirring in her—no, THEIR room. Her face lighted up, her eyes sparkled. She ran to the mirror for a final primp before he should see her. She was more than pleased with the image she saw reflected there. "I never looked better in my life—never so well. I'm glad I kept back this particular dress. He's sure to like it, and it certainly is becoming to me—the best-fitting skirt I ever had—what good lines it has about the hips." She startled at a knock upon the door. She rushed away from the mirror. He had small physical vanity himself—she had never known any one with so little. He had shown that he thought she had no vanity of that kind, either, and he would doubtless misunderstand her solicitude about her personal appearance. Anyhow, of all mornings this would be the worst for him to catch her at the glass.
"Yes?" she called.
"Margaret," came in his voice. And, oh, the difference in it!—the note of tenderness—no, it was not imagination, it was really there! Her eyes filled and her bosom heaved.