"Every evening?"
"Yes, and all day Sunday. There are just two things in his life—the office and me."
"Go on," he reminded her, after a pause.
"It's simple, and, in a way, commonplace. We met, and he cared—terribly—from the first. I didn't, because it was difficult for me to trust any man. I told him so, and he said he'd make me trust him. He did, but it took him a long time. It's pathetically easy for a woman to love a man she can trust. And so I wear his ring and have for two years. When I go back, we're to be married."
"Do you call it honourable to marry one man while you love another?"
"He's been everything in the world to me," she continued, ignoring the thrust. "I've never had a doubt nor a difficulty of any kind, since I've known him, that he hasn't helped me through. Every thought that came into my mind, I have felt perfectly free to tell him. We've never quarrelled. On my side, the feeling has been of long slow growth, but there are no hard words lying between us. It's all been sweet until now. He's clean-minded and clean-hearted and true-souled. If he has ever lied to me, I've never found it out. He has been absolutely and unswervingly loyal in thought, word, and deed, and as for jealousy—why, I don't believe he knows what the word means.
"You know there are two kinds of love. One is an infinite peace that illumines all your life, so surely and so certainly that it's not to be taken away. It's like daily bread to you. The other is like wine—swift and terrible and full of fatal fascination. The one has come to me from him—the other from you."
"Honey!" It was the shrill, high, bird-like voice of the lady from Memphis swiftly rounding the corner of the balcony. "Is this your watch? I've found it on the table and I've been looking all over for you!"
"Thank you." Miss Ward took the trinket coldly and never turned her head. The man, having small respect for the lady from Memphis, never rose from his chair.
After a little hesitation she retreated, pausing in the background, among the palms, to shake a warning finger with assumed coquetry.