Elaine pushed her plate away. “Wonderful food!” she said. “I’m as full as a tick!”
She lit a cigarette. There was no interference. Nearly all the other diners had left now. Wilfred was sitting opposite her with a smile etched around his lips; gazing at her with half-veiled eyes of pleasure. Elaine’s look at him became quizzical.
“Why shouldn’t I be happy?” he said reading her thought. “To-night I have had the best of you. Our walk together in the dark; our confidence in each other. If I were your husband I could have nothing better.”
Elaine’s smile broadened; and he perceived that she regarded this as mere sentimentalizing. Well, it didn’t matter now. He smiled on. He made no attempt to explain that his exquisite happiness was due to the fact that his heart was big and soft with pain. Impossible to convey such things in words.
“Besides, I have confessed myself to you,” he added. “I need hide no longer.”
“You are hiding things from me now!” she said.
“Things, but not myself.”
While she quizzed him, something was working behind it. Her eyes fell. “I wish I could be happy . . . like that,” she murmured.
An apprehension of worse to come struck through Wilfred. “You must feel something the same as I,” he said quickly.