I took luncheon with Miss Van Duyn yesterday. To-night Edgar and I dined with her at Delmonico's. I am tired and in a sort of maze, but have felt impelled to write while Edgar was down-stairs, smoking. I hear him coming down the corridor now. I know his step as well as his voice. This dinner to-night has affected me peculiarly. It has seemed to open to me a new life, a life that is almost as desirable as the one I have dreamed of—the life in the cottage at Thebes, with my editor and his great plans, and his greater love. It is a life of beauty and intelligence and luxury. It has impressed me strangely. I have a feeling that perhaps, in time, even I would not be out of place there—with Edgar who would reign there. I—
A man is in the doorway. He has stood watching the woman at the table, who has written on unconscious of his presence, for a moment.
She sits with her delicate face turned half towards him, her graceful, sunny head bent over the paper, one white hand guiding her pen, the other resting on the paper.
There is a magnetism, a sweetness, a rare charm and simplicity about her. And one looks at the man in the doorway, and knows that they are man and wife, of a truth.
XIV.
Helen had no opportunity to decline Gladys Van Duyn's invitation to Dorp House, the Van Duyn summer place on the Sound, even if she had been reluctant to go thither, as, in a certain way, she was. She craved seclusion with her husband, but she also craved a fuller immersion in that life of ease and art and culture in which she had as yet only dabbled with her feet. She was a trifle appalled by her own ignorance of the ways of that life, and shrank a little from it, as one shrinks from the cold bath while still desiring its shock.
But there was no choice left to her. Gladys Van Duyn was a peremptory little lady, accustomed to have her own winning way, and moreover, the whole matter had been arranged between the elder Van Duyn and Braine before it was mentioned to Helen at all.
Dorp House was within easy reach of the city, so that no business obstacle interposed. It would be infinitely pleasanter for Helen to rest there than to swelter in a hotel; Van Duyn and Braine had need of many and prolonged conferences over the business operations in which they were engaged, and Van Duyn wished Braine to meet a number of gentlemen whose connection with that business it was necessary to conceal as much as possible. These were so often Van Duyn's guests in summer that the necessary conferences with them could be had at Dorp House without observation, whereas any meeting in town would have set tongues wagging.