Her lover was not to be lured into professional comments; he only muttered, “Mauvais quart d’heure”—which made her say indignantly: “Now, Billy, really, that is too much!” and insist that they should go home immediately. “I cannot descend to such levels,” she told him; and was very stern and forbidding when, looking to the right and left, and seeing no man, he begged to be allowed to kiss her.
But this was all froth. Beneath, in the man’s life, were the great tides of love, moving, noiseless and unchangeable, from out the depths of his soul. In the girl’s life it was all shine and perfume and glitter, like flowers blossoming on a rock; beneath, in her heart, was the solid ground of reverence and faith.
II
The two weeks that were to pass before the day that was to be the Day of Days were very full.
To get parish work ahead so that things would run themselves for the month’s absence which had been granted the clergyman was no small undertaking. William West was very busy, and a little preoccupied in his endeavor to put his best thought, not upon his own happiness, but upon committees, or Sunday-school matters, or his assistant’s spiritual anxieties concerning his superior’s indifference to the color of the lectern bookmarks; so it chanced that he saw less of Amy than in the earlier part of their engagement. He had but little time to think of her, and absolutely no time to think of himself.
They were to be married on Thursday. Late Monday afternoon Mr. West, with great timidity, ventured into Mrs. Paul’s drawing-room, with the bold purpose of abstracting his sweetheart for a walk. The project was, of course, promptly crushed.
“As though Amy had any time for that sort of thing!” said Mrs. Paul. “Do you see those presents? She has got to acknowledge every one of them! Amy, your cousin John and I will entertain Mr. West. You can write your notes here, and let him look at you; that’s quite enough for him.”
Amy smiled at him across a barricade of silver bric-à-brac.
“Billy thinks silver picture-frames and brushes and things are a dreadful waste of money,” she said. “Just think how thankful you ought to be, Billy, that I am making our manners for you; you couldn’t say ‘Thank you,’ with truth.”
“Oh, truth,” said John Paul, lounging about the room, with his hands in his pockets—“truth, my dear little cousin, is governed by the law of benefit; didn’t you know that? If it makes the donors feel happy, tell them West has longed for nothing in the world so much as a silver glove buttoner. Now, if you told them the truth, fancy the shock! Ask the Parson.”