"I had never dreamed such things could be," she whispered.
The honeymoon had left her with her illusions sweet and sound. She was no girl, to be outraged by necessities, to quiver under the little jars that make up the wear and tear of a privacy shared with another. Her idols were a woman's; her hopes of the new life were of tougher fabric than the girl's peach-bloom romanticism, to be rubbed bare by any passing sleeve; and those two months they had had together, she and Griff, had given her no cause to doubt the future. Whether the Providence she held in superstitious dread had chosen prose instead of poetry, had elected to rob her, hour by weary hour after she had once settled into her new life, of the happiness that now almost hurt her by its intensity—whether Providence thought surfeit a subtler cruelty than the mere dashing away of an untasted cup, remained to be seen—but Kate's dreads did not lie that way, and her home-coming had not a drop of bitter in among the sweets.
The mother's keen eyes took stock of them both, and the doubt in her face resolved itself slowly as she watched. Like all homely women, she had a quick scent for harmony or discord between married people, and she felt that Kate and Griff were "all right."
"Well, mother?" said Griff, when Kate had left them.
"That is a big question to ask, dear, is it not? But you will do, I fancy, the pair of you. I have been anxious, terribly anxious, about the effect these eight weeks would have on you. You went away gaily enough, boy, but I knew that it was kill or cure."
"What do you mean, quite?"
"You would not have asked me that if the experiment had gone wrong. Suppose you had made a mistake, Griff? Considering your impulsiveness, it is the least one could have expected of you—to make a mistake. Don't you think two months in each other's company, with no one to fill up the gaps, would have made the truth clear to you?"
"If you knew Kate as I do, mother," said the son, with a ridiculous air of possession, "you would see there could have been no mistake."
"Very proper, dear. You sound just like a lover, and I wouldn't be in any hurry, if I were you, to become a mere husband. Your father always forgot, to the end of the chapter, that we hadn't tumbled into love with each other the day before."