But not until hours after did she realize how proud. Hours later as she sat in their drawing-room on the Lake Shore Limited and watched her husband, just outside the open door, talking with a senator and a prominent divine, her tiny disloyalty punished her a little. How hard and clear cut his profile was—his nose was rather large! And how man-sure, and boyishly diffident. She'd be secure, her whole life through—and she hated men who boasted. She suffered some for her snobbish wonder; but she was conscious of a new, great joy.
"My lad!" she tried it aloud. "My lad!"
She laid her fingers to her throat. A pulse throbbed there.
How eager they seemed for his company; how interested! And there was no patronage in their manner; rather they sought to establish equality; they sought to be approved. This game would not hold him—and their chance was equal to any. They were both young, very young—though she was extremely mature for twenty years! Maybe—she didn't lean exactly toward the ministry—but perhaps a senator—
Her eyes grew misty and veiled; she was lost to all but her dreams.
And then the train stopped and she heard the senator talking, his voice very loud with no din of motion to drown it.
"I snapped my right over"—it punctured her blissful gossamer of fancy—"I snapped my right over—and he made no more trouble for anyone, in that town."
She heard her husband answer, but could not make out the words. But apparently the prominent divine had been champing on the bit; the senator, she thought, must have interrupted him.
"—a bully, the town bully, and an extremely powerful man. But that did not deter me. I was outraged, you see—righteously indignant. So I hooked with my left—I believe, sir, that that is the correct term—"
The absurd, fat things! She heard her husband assuring him that it was. Her husband!