Captain Hathaway, entering with his father's guests, came straight across to her, and she looked up, smiling, into her husband's face as though he had come in response to a murmured summoning spell. She ceased and leaned back her head against him as he stood close behind her.
"Oh, Harry," she said, "it's so lovely to have you again—for always, always!" Her eyes half closed and her bosom heaved as she drank in an intoxicating realization of his definite return, sketched to herself a delicious little swoon.
"My dear!" he murmured. "It's good! Home—home for always with my beloved!"
She clutched at his hand, and for a moment, while the loud-voiced crowd vanished, they were secret lovers, snatched up to dizzy heights, intensely thrilling with an exquisite community, eyes looking into eyes and seeing more than human brain can translate of transcendent vision. She released him and bowed forward suddenly with a little gulp, striking, with trembling hands, vague chords on the piano.
"Now, Ethel, my dear," came the crass boom of her father-in-law's voice, "when you've finished your spooning, let's have something jolly. What about that bit out of 'Not a Word to the Wife!' Tra-la-la-la-la!" He sketched a hideous caricature of blatant banality. "We're all jolly to-night—none of your mooning sentiment, but jolly. Eh, ladies and gentlemen?—properly jolly for Harry's first night back."
Ethel got up from the piano, coupling an allegation of another's superior capacity with an invitation to perform, an invitation smirkingly accepted.
The slangy crash and bang alternating with hyper-emphasized sentimentality of the current tune was a cover under which Ethel Hathaway retreated to happy intimacy with her husband. Not for long was she allowed it. The very-consciously best-looking of the co-directors' wives sidled up and subsided into the adjacent chair. She yearned up into Captain Hathaway's face, while she cooed deprecation of her intrusion to his wife.
"But I do so want to hear how Captain Hathaway earned his Military Cross! Of course, I read all about it in the papers—but then—they're so bald, aren't they? One misses, what shall I say?—the human touch of heroism."
Mrs. Hathaway caught her husband's eye and forbade the instant flight.