To Aliette, lonely no longer, Ronnie's comradeship compensated for so much that, as yet, the social disadvantages of their position hardly mattered. Only every now and then, in lonely-waking night-hours when full perception of the thing she had done shimmered black for a moment through the rosy veils of affection, did her heart grow faint at the thought of perpetual ostracism from her kind. At other times, her sufferings, her self-torturings were all for Ronnie.
Ronnie, she knew, chafed at his defeat. Ronnie had grown to hate Brunton. Ronnie--for her sake--wanted social position, success. Ronnie loathed the illegal fact that they had had to register as "Mr. and Mrs. Cavendish and maid" at the quiet Kensington hotel, whither Moses Moffatt's shibboleth of "bachelor chambers" drove them on their return from Chilworth.
But Ronnie had other frets--money-frets--on that October afternoon when they strolled under the browning trees.
They strolled lover-like, arm in arm; and Ponto the Dane, incongruous appanage of their elopement, followed leisurely. Aliette was all in furs, soft furs that cloaked her from the cream of her chin to the slimness of her ankles. Above the furs her face showed happy, glowing with a new youth, a new softness.
"Man," she said suddenly, "do you realize that we are two thoroughly unpractical people?"
"Are we?" He pressed her arm. "Does it matter very much?"
"Of course it matters." She paused, and went on shyly: "Don't you understand that I've been living with you for three months, and that so far I haven't contributed a single penny to the--to the establishment?"
"How absurd you are!" He tried to brush the matter aside; but that she refused to allow.
"I ought to contribute something, you know. I'm not quite penniless."
"You're not going to pay my hotel bill," he parried: a little stubbornly, she thought.