“Capital!” Griff cut in. “Only yesterday I had Parkinson on my neck for an hour, howling about the difficulty of getting draperies and rugs for the stunning place Lary has made of his old junk heap. Commissioned a fellow in Paris to send him some things and—Lord love us! You should have seen the consignment! It wasn’t the price. But Parkinson hates to be laughed at, when he’s been stung.”
“Lary’s orderly mind would take care of the needs of a dozen men like Parkinson, and it would give him a chance to see Europe—right!”
II
Thus it came about that on a serene May morning Judith Trench dismissed the maids, closed the apartment and set her face towards the rising sun. For her it was the real adventure. She had looked at Europe so often. Now she would see through the shell, with Lary’s eyes.
At the Cherbourg pier Mr. Denslow met them. Mamma and the boys could hardly wait to see Judith’s new husband. But after a week Lary’s importance was blurred, sent into almost complete occultation, as Eileen’s vivid youth asserted itself. Ben was her slave from the first. The night after they left her in Brussels, to have a few lessons with Ysaye, and Lary and Judith set forth on their real honeymoon, he confided to his mother that he was going to add another Trench to the Denslow family, as soon as he was sure he could earn a living for two.
“Have you asked her?” Mrs. Denslow quizzed.
“No. She thinks I’m a boy. You might tell her that I’m nearly five years older than she. I thought I’d grow whiskers—to impress her.”
III
From Antwerp to Munich, from Venice to Constantinople, and thence by boat to Naples and the eastern coast of Spain, Lary and the other half of his being wandered, too happy to remember the fiery ordeal wherein their severed selves had been fused again. When they reached Paris, the middle of August, a great pile of letters awaited them. Lary thrust one of them into his inside pocket. It was from his mother. Another he tore open with eager fingers. A moment later he handed it to Judith, his eyes shining. It bore the signature of a discriminating editor:
“I never knew why Renaissance art, with all its brilliance and charm, was unsatisfying to me, until I read your keenly analytical essay. We would be glad to consider a series of essays, covering other architectural periods and styles.”