"Maybe," she essayed quite abruptly, "Maybe it was a trifle funny of me not to tramp this afternoon. But the bridge- building work begins again next week, you know. It's pretty strenuous, everybody says. Men come home very tired from it. Not specially sociable. So I just made up my mind," she said, in a voice that though playfully lowered was yet rather curiously intense. "So I just made up my mind that I would stay at home this afternoon and get acquainted with my Husband." Half-proud, half-shamed, her puzzled eyes lifted to mine. "Because it's dawned on me very suddenly," she laughed, "that I don't know my Husband's opinion on one solitary subject in the world except—just me!" With a rather amusing little flush she stooped down and smothered her face in a pot of blue hyacinths. "Oh—hyacinths!" she murmured. "And May rain! The smell of them! Will I ever forget the fragrance of this week—while Time lasts?" But the eyes that lifted to mine again were still puzzled. "Now—that Mr. Keets," she faltered. "Why in just an hour or two this morning, why in just the little time that luncheon takes, I know his religion and his Mother's first name. I know his philosophies, and just why he adores Buskin and disagrees with Bernard Shaw. I know where he usually stays when he's in Amsterdam and just what hotel we both like best in Paris. Why I know even where he buys his boots, and why. And I buy mine at the same place and for just exactly the same reason. But my Husband." Quite in spite of herself a little laugh slipped from her lips. "Why—I don't even know how my Husband votes!" she gasped. In some magic, excitative flash of memory her breath began to quicken. "It—It was at college, you know, that we met—Paul and I," she explained. "At a dance the night before my graduation." Once again her face flamed like a rose. "Why, we were engaged, you know, within a week! And then Paul went to China!—Oh, of course, we wrote," she said, "and almost every day, too. But——"
"But lovers, of course, don't write a great deal about buying boots," I acquiesced, "nor even so specially much about Buskin nor even their mothers."
In the square of the library doorway a man's figure loomed a bit suddenly.
"Vic! Aren't you ever coming?" fretted her impatient Bridegroom.
Like a homing bird she turned and sped to her mate!
Yet an hour later, when I passed the library door, I saw Paul Brenswick lying fast asleep in the depth of his big leather chair. Fire wasted—books neglected—Chance itself forgotten or ignored! But the Bride was nowhere to be seen.
I was quite right though when I thought that I should find her in her room. Just as I expected, too, she was standing by the window staring somewhat blankly out at the Dunes.
But the eyes that she lifted to me this time were not merely puzzled—they were suffering. If Paul Brenswick could have seen his beloved at this moment and even so much as hoped that there was a God, he would have gone down on his knees then and there and prayed that for Love's sake the very real shock which he had just given her would end in laughter rather than tears. Yet her speech, when it came at last, was perfectly casual.
"He—he wouldn't talk," she said.
"Couldn't, you mean!" I contradicted her quite sharply. "Husbands can't, you know! Marriage seems to do something queer to their vocal chords."