"He talked to us as though we were—niggers!" he rasped. The clasp of Macgowan's fingers tightened slightly on his arm.
"Exactly, my dear Ried," came the smooth accents. "But remember, he is a young man! His education is not yet finished."
With this cryptic remark, Macgowan hurried off to join the groom, leaving Williams to stare after him in frowning surmise.
CHAPTER III
Dorothy glanced up from the letter which she was eagerly devouring.
"Father writes that the company is completely reorganized and that he's retiring for good—and, Reese, he says to thank you for everything! Were things so bad as that?"
"Worse," said Armstrong laconically, then smiled as his wife's fingers crept into his.
This man, to whose lips a smile came so rarely, had of a sudden become a boy again, laughing from morning to night, adoring his bride with a strangely fearful veneration yet partaking with her in a joyous and exhilarating zest, a gayety unabashed and unashamed, a sheer reckless enjoyment of youth and life—and partnership.
Partnership, that was it! That was the mystery, oldest of the world's life, before which men and women fall down and worship in prayer and joyous laughter and exalted fear, the mystery wherein two becomes as one, one in faith and hope and tears and laughter, one for better or for worse; and each of them knowing with a deliberate surety that though all the sky crash down in ruin, there remains to welcome them one soul who cannot falter or fail—past life, past death, into hell or heaven itself.