He opened the brown door of the shabby little cottage, and stopped.
The fire on the hearth had settled to a warm, rosy steadiness, filling the room with its glow and starting velvet shadows that tapestried the simple place with an airy brocade of shifting patterns. In the centre of the room stood the round table, robed in white and gay with the antique shop's ware of blue-and-white Wedgewood. The perfume of coffee and fragrance of good food floated on the warm air. The fire snapped at intervals as if from jovial excess of spirits, and a tea-kettle was bubbling with the furious enthusiasm of all true tea-kettles. It was the room of his fancy, the unattainable home that Elsie had pictured on the first evening he had spoken to her out of his sick heart.
Elsie herself stood beside the hearth. Elsie? He never had seen her like this. But then, he scarcely had seen her at all except in the severe black of a nurse's livery.
She had merely taken off her jacket, now, although he did not realize the fact. Her soft white blouse rolled away from a round, full throat pure in color and smoothness as cream. She was no sylph-slim beauty, but a deep-bosomed, young girl-woman, fashioned with that rich fulness of curve and outline that artists once loved, but which Fashion now disapproves. Her mouth, too, curved in generous, womanly softness; neither a thin line nor a round rosebud. Her dark hair rippled of itself around her forehead and was lustrous in the firelight.
His entrance caught her off guard. He surprised herself in her eyes, before she masked feeling in gayety. And he saw a wistful, frightened girl whose trembling excitement matched his own.
The latching of the door behind him ended the brief instant of revelation. At once she turned to him the cordial comrade's face he knew.
"Dinner is served," she announced merrily. "At least, it is waiting in the oven. We have hot biscuits, scrambled eggs, a fifty-eighth variety of baked beans, and strawberry jam. There is no meat, because you only shopped at a grocery, sir. Do you really adore canned oysters, Anthony?"
"I never tasted one," he slowly replied, putting down the packages he had brought, without taking his gaze from her.
"Well, you bought six tins of them," she shrugged.
He made no pretense of replying, this time, moving across the room toward her. He was remembering that she was a bride, who by her confession loved him, and that he had given her nothing except the gold ring compelled by custom; not a caress, not a flower, even, to speak of tenderness and reassurance. He was astounded at himself, appalled by his degree of selfish absorption. All day she had given him of her understanding, her warm companionship, her gracious tact and heartening cheerfulness, exacting nothing—and he had taken. Oh, yes, he had taken!