He had talked himself into a gloom. The smoke of Thrigsby seemed to smirch the glade.
“Poor old thing!” said Cathleen. “I don’t see that it matters much. You’re you, just the same. We live in a house called Roseneath. It’s in Putney, but we call it London. Father makes a lot of money, and is a recorder and all the rest of it, but we aren’t anything in particular. We turn up our noses at a lot of people, but there are lots more people who turn up their noses at us. You’d laugh if you could see how savage it makes Edith and Rachel sometimes when they grovel for invitations and don’t get them. And it was wonderful what a difference it made when Basil got his blue at Cambridge. All Putney——”
She threw out her hands to indicate the extent of her brother’s triumph. Then, realizing how far their talk had taken them from the sweet employment which was their habit, she crept nearer.
“If I thought all that nonsense was going to upset you, and hang about you while we’re waiting, I’d run away with you to-morrow.”
“Oh, my darling!” cried he, overcome by this recklessness and proof of the seriousness of her intentions. They sat with hands clasped, gazing into each other’s eyes in a charmed happiness.
“Forever and ever,” said René.
“Forever and ever,” cried she. “It isn’t many people who find the real thing in the first.”
He glowed.
“Oh! we must never spoil it.”
Then they lay side by side with the volume of love poems between them, and he read aloud their favorites.