“So you know what no one else knows,” said Jim. “It is a big confidence.”
“Of course.”
“And I like to confide in you.”
She thanked him by a pressure of her hand his arm.
“You know, Jim,” she told him, “that whole thing needn’t have happened so easily. Most of the trouble in the world comes from these women who work men up so terribly and have nothing in the world to do except love and marry.”
“There’s a lot to that job if it’s done right.”
“Not enough. I want love and—marriage, but——”
He held her closer to his side in the darkness and her voice caught for a minute.
“Horatia, you are so heavenly sweet——”
Afterwards Horatia was to remember that evening and to try in vain to recapture its charm and warmth. She felt it then as the beginning of many wonderful evenings. Jim’s story had been saddening but reassuring. It had stolen none of her romance. They were closer than before. They went back to Horatia’s rooms and Grace Walsh, having helped to provide supper, left them alone afterwards. Horatia told the usual callers, who telephoned, that she would not be home and laughed joyously at her casual lying.