"If I could only get away from those mental pictures," she confessed. "They stand between us like a barrier. Just think of arriving at the point where you want to doze after dinner and dream over some nice, slow, old book, with your head comfortably nodding now and then. And the fire flickering and the cat purring on the rug. Lovely, isn't it? And instead, think of realizing wearily that you've got to spend the evening at the opera or playing bridge. And that, of course, means turning yourself at an early hour into the hands of your maid for repairs and decoration. And then you've got to sit upright the whole evening because your stays, which are guaranteed to give you the lithe and willowy figure of youth, will not let you lean back. And you do not dare to smile, because you will crack the kalsomining on your face; neither may you move your head, you are so afraid that the curls and puffs and braids may not be pinned on tight. Oh, it's a dog's life!" she sighed heavily.
"And it's not for you," Preston spoke firmly. "There is nothing coltish about me." Alice laughed, it was so true. "Business is all that very deeply interests me, and amusements bore me very much. I like the after-dinner doze and the fire and cat already. You will probably have more of that kind of thing than you like, if you marry me. Alice, will you not consider?"
"Mrs. Wilstead, Mrs. Wilstead," a page's voice rang through the shrubbery and came nearer and nearer and Alice took from him a thick letter addressed to her in Isabel Hewston's hand and adorned with a special delivery stamp.
"From a dear friend," Alice exclaimed. "Will you excuse me while I look at it? There may be some matter of importance, you know."
In Preston's manner there was no hint of his annoyance. He behaved as well as a man could when interrupted in the most fervent declarations of affection which the limitations of his nature permitted him. He even suggested that he withdraw, and rose, hat in hand. Could complaisance, consideration go further? There were only two days before him, and she had never been so near yielding before.
"Oh, no, no," almost possessively, she stretched forth a hand to detain him. "You have nothing to do but wait, and I shall run through this," touching the letter, "in a moment."
Preston sat down beside her again and lighting a cigarette, smoked and looked out over the brilliant garden before him while she read.
It was evident, Alice discovered this before she had finished the first page, that Isabel Hewston was actuated by no deeper motive than pure, erratic impulse when she placed that special stamp upon the letter. At least so Alice and Preston probably would have agreed and Isabel reluctantly would have admitted it. But the Fates who sit in the background and transmit wireless messages to mortals would have smiled inscrutably and shaken their heads. If Isabel hadn't stuck that stamp on for no reason whatever, and if the page hadn't sought Alice through the breeze-caressed, rose-scented garden and given her the missive at the exact moment he did—but, as Eugene Gresham would say, "What's the use? Why conjecture?" What really occurred was this:
"Dearest Alice," wrote Mrs. Hewston, "how I envy you in that southern paradise while here the weather merely changes from sleet and snow to rain and then back again."
There was a page or two of this and of Willoughby's various ailments and symptoms, and then a long and glowing account of her visit to Perdita Hepworth, and a great deal of minute, enthusiastic description of the gowns that Dita was designing for her.