“Certainly,” Miss Anthon replied coolly, drawing on her gloves. “It can make no difference to me.”
But it had made a difference to her already.
“So these are your real views of my marriage!” she exclaimed, as Miss Parker wandered off to the old spinet.
Erard’s amused glance said, “Well, yes! if you want to know.”
Her former ambitions tantalized her; this cynical, absurd little man tantalized her. Was she selling herself cheap? Was Erard stronger and finer than she?
“Good-by.” She turned away with a last look at the picture. They shook hands. She seemed to be making her farewell to a few mad dreams.
On the drive back she maintained a moody silence. The past month since her engagement, life had seemed free and simple and full of interests. Her equanimity had comforted her and assured her that she was making no mistake. Now the horizon contracted again, and she wondered whether she had broken the traces that galled her, or only shifted them for a time.
“Marriage ought not to be such a mystery!” she exclaimed at last.
“You ought to feel sure enough,” Miss Parker replied encouragingly. “All the money you want and a good fellow whom you took of your own free will.”
“There is no reason to expect mistakes, Molly, and almost every girl feels the same way, I suppose, when she is engaged. But the smashes come, all the same.”