Posey started visibly.
"Must we, John? Oh! I hadn't thought of that."
"Is the idea a pain to you?"
"Perhaps. I don't know. I've always put it out of my mind when it weighed on me. Daddy gave me a year, John," she added pleadingly. "And the year began in October. This is only February. We're all so happy as we are."
Happy! Again that clutch of iron upon Glynn's heartstrings!
"Happiness will come more fully and freely, my sweetheart," he said, striving for words, "when we have put his heart's desire beyond all chance. I think you will both have to come back with me to America this Spring, if I'm to serve his interests as I should. Let me take my wife with me, Posey."
"What, now?" she cried, with wide-open, panic-stricken eyes. "Oh! goodness gracious, I hope not now!"
"I am due again in New York almost immediately, but will be free to return the beginning of next month, or a little later. By that time the heat will be sending you away from the Riviera, and would it not be best for us to be married very quietly here, and let Mr. Winstanley's son and daughter take care of him upon the voyage?"
"A wedding here? What a funny idea!" cried Posey. "Not a girl I know to ask as bridesmaid—at least, the only one I'd want would be Helen Carstairs, who has just arrived in Cannes, and I don't know about her. Perhaps she mightn't wish; but she was too dear to me, John, on shipboard, as I wrote you. By the way, you didn't seem to take the least interest in my friendship with Helen, and yet it has done me a world of good. Not a girly-girly affair in the least, I assure you. We'd both have scorned that. She has written to me several times, and I was simply wild with pleasure to hear she was coming down to Cannes. I think if you'd realized what Helen is, John, at least what she is to me, you'd not have been so indifferent. I must tell you the truth, I was really quite hurt with you. But you'll meet here, and then you'll see for yourself, and end by adoring her as I do—oh, John," she exclaimed, interrupting her light chatter with an exclamation of terror, "there's that woman now!"
"What woman, Posey?" he asked, bewildered at her rapid change of subject.