"He never will come, I know it!" Elsie exclaimed, her heavy lashes wet. "Can't we do something? Can't we go after him?"
"I will go after him," her husband agreed. "But not to-night." He crumpled the envelope and flung it aside. "Fred Masterson is not going under without a fight. If doctors, sanitariums, his love for Holly and our help can set him on his feet again, he shall be cured and do all he dreams of doing. To-morrow I will find him."
"Not to-night?"
"Not to-night. Elsie, don't you understand? He loved his wife. If I lost you so—if you married someone else——"
She put her small fingers across his lips, stilling the sacrilege.
"No! Do not let our little house even hear you say it!"
"Nor any house of ours! To-morrow I will buy the house we looked at together, and you shall have an orgy of shopping to furnish it. Oh, yes, you shall, and I'll help you. Have lots of dark red things and brown leather in that front room where you told me about Alenya of the Sea. And—do nurseries have to be pink?"
"Of course not, foolish one. We might make ours sunshine-color, like the satiny inside of a buttercup or a drop of honey in a daffodil. Anthony——"
"Yes?"