"So you did," replied Dick in the cheerful unconscious way that so irritated her in certain moods. Not always could she bear with composure his masculine assumption that whatever pleased him must delight his wife. "So you did," said he. "And it's still locked. But there was the window from the front balcony into your sitting room—and the door from your sitting room to this room. You see, I was determined to find you."
His tone of laughing tenderness helped her half to guess, half to make out his expression. Usually she accepted without a protesting thought the whole of the routine of married life. But to-night she grew hot with a burning blush of imperiled modesty as he advanced toward her. "Don't," she said; "I'm doing my exercises."
"No—you were dreaming. Of what?" Then, without waiting for an answer about a matter of so little importance, "Gallatin tells me he has decided to stay on—if he can arrange it—and he seems to think he can. So I'm feeling fine. You don't know what a jolt he gave me at supper. Did you talk with him about it?"
"Yes."
"Urged him to stay?"
"I tried to show him he ought to stay."
"Ever so much obliged."
She stopped in her exercises to say quickly: "Oh, I didn't do it for you. I did it for myself."
"Why, you dislike him."
"He's some one to talk with—some one that listens and answers. And—I don't dislike him."