"Surely! The first day I went in, the superintendent asked if I were related to Mr. Adriance. I told him yes, a poor relation. True, isn't it? He was satisfied, anyhow. They call me Andy, down there."
"Andy!" she essayed experimentally. "Andy! It goes pretty well."
They laughed together, then he gently pushed her toward the door.
"Go in," he bade, with his commanding manner; the manner Elsie had taught him. "You will take a royal cold out here, and then what should I do for my meals? I have to eat if I am to labor; besides, I like my food. What did you call those cakes we had this morning?"
"'Belle cala, tout chaud!'" she intoned the soft street-cry of old New Orleans' breakfast hours, her voice catching the quaint, enticing inflections of those dark-skinned vendors who once loitered their sunny rounds freighted with fragrant baskets. "Some day I will show you what I call a city, sir; if you'll take me?"
"I'll take you anywhere, but I'll not let you go as far as the next corner. Now, go in-doors, and good-bye."
She obeyed him so far as to draw back into the warm doorway. There, sheltered, she stayed to watch him swinging down the hill through the gray winter morning. It was nearly seven o'clock, but the sun had not yet warmed or gilded the atmosphere. Bleakness reigned, except in the hearts of the man and woman.
They had been married two months. Elsie Adriance slowly closed the door and turned to the uncleared breakfast table. But presently she left the dishes she had begun to assemble, and walked to one of the rear windows. There she leaned, gazing where Anthony never gazed: toward the gray-and-white stateliness of New York, across the ice-dotted river. She contemplated the city, not with defiance or challenge, but with the steady-eyed gravity, of one measuring an enemy.
Two months, and the victory was still with her! Yet, she warned herself, surely some day New York would call. She never quite could forget that. She herself was not unlike a city preparing for defence, feverishly grasping at every stone to build her ramparts. How she envied Lucille Masterson her beauty, the elder Adriance his wealth, since those possessions might have bound Anthony closer to her! She recalled Mrs. Masterson's exquisite costumes, colored like flowers and as delightful to the touch; the costly perfumes that made all her belongings fragrant; the studied coquetry that kept her like Cleopatra, never customary or stale. To oppose all this, Anthony's wife had only—her hearth. For she never would keep her husband against his will; Elsie Adriance never would claim as a right what she had held as a gift.
The kitten, a black-and-white midget suggestive of a Coles-Phillips drawing, rubbed insistently against the girl's foot. She picked up the living toy and nestled its furry warmth beneath her chin, as she turned in quest of milk. She thrust forebodings from her mind with resolute will. It was too soon to think of these things; Anthony loved her, Anthony was content.