“Let me in,” said Cecily, hoarsely. She did not know her own voice.
Nor did he. She could hear him lighting the gas, coming to the door, opening it.
She fairly pushed him aside so that she could get in.
“Cecily! For God’s sake, what’s the matter?”
She looked at him gravely, her eyes flaring in her white face.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what was the matter. I must have been right. Don’t you see I must have been right. All I wanted was right things. But that doesn’t make any difference. I want you home. I came up—I came up—because I’m your wife.” And she tumbled over in a desolate worn-out little heap at his feet.
CHAPTER XXX
“IT will be like another wedding trip, darling,” said Dick tenderly, and hurried out to make some final arrangements. The motor with the children had just moved away and Cecily sat in her compartment in the train and waited for her husband. He was taking her away for a few months on the advice of every one, to dull some ugly memories, to rest her and give people a chance to forget that there had ever been “trouble.” Not that people took that trouble very seriously. They smiled a good deal over it.
It seemed like a dream, thought Cecily. She had learned in the past few weeks to take comments casually, to listen to the sentimental I-told-you-sos, to even listen to the jesting, jesting about the storm which had been the great storm of her life. There would never be another one, she thought. She had learned too much for that. It was good to know how to avoid storms, to have Dick back, to have again the sense of normality, to love and be loved.
Another wedding trip, he had said. So he meant it. He was rapidly getting over the sense of difficulty between them. His wife was more pliable and he was starvedly grateful for her affection. He would have said that “they both had learned a lesson.” But, as Cecily looked quietly out of the window, she knew it was not another wedding trip. Not because the mysteries were gone, but because her belief—or was it illusion—that life between them would be all love, all fine devotion, all delicate tenderness, was gone.