Gertrude's face was a study. For an instant her friend thought she was about to confess that she had made a mistake. Then the old spirit flared up. Gertrude held her head high.
"I would never own it if I did," she said. "When the next election comes around, however—"
She did not finish her remark, but picked up a book and fell to reading.
"This 'Fated to Conquer' isn't a bad story, Mary," she said after a while. "When I read such a book—of love and romance and all that—I wish I were, or had been, of the marrying kind of women. As it is—I'm going to say it in confidence, Mary—I believe, when we get out of this, I'll marry Bailey."
She did not notice her friend's peculiar expression, but talked idly on. "You know he has wanted to marry me several times in the past. To be sure, he hasn't proposed for a couple of years, but he will. A man will always propose to the woman he loves if she gives him half a chance."
"Why didn't you marry him?" asked Mary in an expressionless voice.
"O, I never loved him, or thought I didn't," answered Gertrude. "I didn't fully believe in his love for me, either; that is, he did not love me as I wanted to be loved. We are comrades from childhood, and sort of cousins. He's been as near a brother to me as he could and I've been fond of him in that kind of way."
"Then you don't love him—not really?" asked Mary; and she could not entirely suppress a joyous note in her voice.
"Well, yes," blandly replied Gertrude. "I love Bailey in a way. Not the passionate kind of love one reads of in novels—like this, for instance;" she indicated the book she had been reading. "The heroine goes through all sorts of tribulations for love's sake, and the hero finally renounces everything for her sake; but that is only in books. People don't love in that violent fashion. Mutual esteem and confidence are what I see between the happiest married couples of my acquaintance. Bailey is thoroughly reliable, helpful and honorable. I am tired of standing up to the world alone. It must be a comfort to have a good husband to take care of you."
"It must indeed," replied Mary, inscrutably.