“Ah, but that’s so that I may be more worthy to give myself to you.”
“But this flat business!”
They thought perhaps that they could marry in the autumn. Late autumn with the leaves turning to wonderful colors and the lake shimmering with the first cold winds. It would put spirit into that most marvellous of honeymoons. And after that they would come back to the office—and the flat.
“Let’s look at flats and furniture—sort of surreptitiously——” begged Horatia.
He was stern.
“If this is to be a secret,” he said, “how on earth can we go about asking for furniture? Now I will tell you anyway that we are not going to buy much furniture. And I will show you why we are not if you will call on me next Sunday morning.”
“You have furniture of your own.”
“I have a few nice things—not awfully valuable—but you shall see.”
She saw them and they were far more lovely than he had told her. His little apartment was much more luxurious than she had imagined. There were small, beautiful rugs and several pictures which had signatures which startled Horatia, and an inlaid table stood beside a great velvet chair and faced another chair, a rocker, low-seated and high-backed, not at all a man’s chair.
“I suppose I was rocked to sleep in that chair,” said Langley whimsically.