"Louise does not want it talked about for a day or two," he observed. "We have not made any plans yet."
"Is Louise going to remain upon the stage?"
"Probably, if she wishes it," he replied; "but I want to travel first for a year or so, before we settle definitely upon anything. I did not think that you would be so much surprised, Sophy."
"Perhaps I am not really," she admitted. "One thinks of a thing as being possible, for a long time, and when it actually comes—well, it takes you off your feet just the same. You know," she added slowly, "there are no two people in this world so far apart in their ways as you and Louise."
"That is true from one point of view," he confessed. "From another, I think that there are no two people so close together. Of course, it seems wonderful to me, and I suppose it does to you, Sophy, that she should care for a man of my type. She is so brilliant and so talented, such a woman of this latter-day world, the world of which I am about as ignorant as a man can be. Perhaps, after all, that is the real explanation of it. Each of us represents things new to the other."
"Did you say that no one has been told yet—no one at all?"
"No one except Stephen," John assented. "That is why I went up to Cumberland, to tell him."
"You have not told the prince?" Sophy asked, dropping her voice a little. "Louise has not told him?"
"Not that I know of. Why do you ask?" John inquired, looking into Sophy's face.
"I don't know," she answered. "It just occurred to me. He and Louise have known each other for such a long time, and I wondered what he might have to say about it."