“A charming-looking wreck, I’ll say.” He stooped to kiss her.
The rose-coloured glasses were still attached to Steve’s naturally keen eyes. Like many persons he knew a multitude of facts but was quite ignorant concerning vital issues. He had spent his honeymoon in rapt and unreal fashion. He had realized his boyhood dream of returning to Nevada a rich and respected man with a fairy-princess sort of wife. The deadly anaesthesia of unreality which these get-rich-quick candidates of to-day indulge in at the outset of their struggle still had Steve in its clutch. He had not even stirred from out its influence. He had accomplished what he had set out to accomplish––and he was now about to realize that there is a distinct melancholy in the fact that everyone needs an Aladdin’s window to finish. But under the influence of the anæsthesia he had proposed to have an everlasting good time the rest of his life, like the closing words of a fairy tale: “And then the beautiful young princess and the brave young prince, having slain the seven-headed monster, lived happily ever, ever after!”
With this viewpoint, emphasized by the natural conceit of youth, Steve had passed his holiday with the Gorgeous Girl.
“What did you want, darling?” he urged.
“To talk to you––I want you to listen to my plan. You are to come with me to New York for the fall opera and all the theatres––oh, along in November. It’s terribly dull here. Jill Briggs and her husband and some of the others are going, and we can take rooms at the Astor and all be together and have a wonderful time!”
“I’d rather stay in our own home,” he pleaded. “It’s such fun to have a real home. We can entertain, you know. Besides, I’m the worker and you are the player, and I don’t understand your sort of life any more than you can understand mine. So you must play and let me look on––and love me, that’s all I’ll ever ask.”
“You’re a dear,” was his reward; “but we’ll go to New York?”
“I’ll have to take you down and leave you––I’m needed at the office.”
“But I’d be the odd one––I’d have to have a partner. Steve, dear, you don’t have to grub. When we were engaged you always had time for me.”