“Honey, what is it?”
“I want you to know I love you,” she rushed on breathlessly. “It wasn’t just gratitude that made me marry you. I’ll always love you. You’re splendid and fine [181] ]and generous. They don’t come any better. Never doubt it, ’Dolph! Never—will you?” She shook his arm, repeating the question over and over.
“Why—kiddo—”
“And I have made you happy?” she broke in on his amazement. “I have given you something for all you’ve given me?”
He answered quickly enough then.
“Everything, honey. Why, these past five years’ve been more than most fellows get in a lifetime. I ask myself often what an old tout like me ever did to deserve ’em. In the theater and out—hasn’t been a day that wasn’t heaven. That’s what you’ve given me.”
She sat an instant silent. Then before he could divine her intention she had carried his hand to her lips. But it was not their moisture he noticed as he drew it hastily away and slipped an arm round her.
[182]
]CHAPTER II
Over Long Island, as Cleeburg drove in the following day, hung a mist that made the low hills look like a mirage melting into the sky. It was as if the smoke of the city reached its long arm far over green stretches and cool woodland, cloaking Nature with the garment of industry.
Little ’Dolph sat forward, hat tossed to the floor, cigar ashes strewn over it like snow. He had smoked incessantly from the moment the car shot past the hedge surrounding the Cleeburg place. He had smoked with brow furrowed and teeth chewing on the butt of his weed, concentrating so intensely that for the first time in years it failed to circle from corner to corner of the friendly mouth. He was worried—and about Gloria. What had got her last night? What had brought the fever to her eyes and that desperate grip to her fingers? What had made her cry, with long sobs like a child’s when his arm went round her? Wasn’t like her. Not a bit. He’d never seen her like that, didn’t know how to handle it.