Owen had charged Toni with polite messages to the two girls; and they, being somewhat in awe of a real live writer, were not sorry to avoid a meeting with their host; but Toni seemed so loth to part with them that she detained them all on the steps, chattering eagerly while the stars winked down out of the clearing sky and the owls hooted in melancholy fashion from the tops of the tall trees behind the house.
Finally the last farewells were said, the last appointments made; and Toni, yawning, turned to Andrews and bade him lock up safely.
She was still yawning when she came into the library a moment later; and in the lamplight Owen caught a glimpse of her little red mouth gaping behind her hand as she came up to the table.
"How sleepy I am!" Indeed her eyes were bright, like those of a sleepy child. "Aren't you coming, Owen? It's ever so late."
"Why didn't you pack your friends off a little earlier then?"
"Oh, I didn't want them to go." She yawned childishly once more. "Owen"—suddenly a thought struck her—"you're not cross, are you? You didn't mind me having them here? You know, I thought it was going to be a storm——"
"Of course I didn't mind," he said, disarmed by her sudden appeal. "It was my fault for turning up unexpectedly. But now, Toni, supposing you run away to bed? I really must finish this work, and it's getting late."
She agreed, docilely, and kissing him lightly, ran away to bed as she was commanded, falling asleep as soon as she was safely there.
But Owen sat late in the library—sat, indeed, till the short summer night began to recede with stealthy, sliding footsteps before the victorious onrush of the dawn; and in those quiet, lamp-lit hours he asked himself despairingly why he had been in such haste to marry.
One consolation lay in the fact that Toni herself had not the slightest idea that her marriage was anything but a success. She did not know that her idleness, her incessant chatter about trivial things, her constant interruptions, her unauthorized intrusions into the privacy of his working hours, worried him almost beyond measure.