Lane said nothing, but watched the city with smiling lips. To him the squat car ferries, the lighters, the dirty tramp steamers, the railroad yards across the river, as well as the lofty buildings of the long city—all the teeming life here at the mouth of the country—meant Traffic, the intercourse of men. And he, too, loved the great roaring city. He looked at it with a vista that reached from the Iowa town where he had first "railroaded it," up through the intervening steps at St. Louis and Torso, to his niche in the largest of these buildings,—all the busy years which he had spent dealing with men.
Isabelle touched his arm.
"I wish you were coming, too, John," she said as the breeze struck in from the open sea. "Do you remember how we talked of going over when we were in Torso?"
What a stretch of time there was between those first years of marriage and to-day! She would never have considered in the Torso days that she could sail off like this alone with a maid and leave her husband behind.
"Oh, it will be only a few weeks,—you'll enjoy yourself," he replied. He had been very good about her going over to join Vickers, made no objections to it this time. They were both growing more tolerant, as they grew older and saw more of life.
"What is in the paper?" she asked idly, as her husband rolled it up.
"There's a dirty roast on your friend, Percy Woodyard,—nothing else!"
"See, that must be the tug!" exclaimed Isabelle, pushing up her veil to kiss her husband. "Good-by—I wish you were going, too—I shall miss you so—be sure you exercise and keep thin!"…
She watched the two men climb down into the bobbing tug and take places beside the pilot room,—her tall, square-shouldered husband, and the slighter man, leaning on a cane, both looking up at her with smiles. John waved his paper at her,—the one that had the "roast" about Percy Woodyard. She had meant to read that,—she might see the Woodyards in Paris. Then the tug moved off, both men still waving to her. She hurried to the rear deck to get a last look, sentimental forlornness at leaving her husband coming over her afresh. As she gazed back at the retreating tug there was also in her heart a warm feeling for Cairy. "Poor Tom!" she murmured without knowing why.
On this great ship, among the thousand or more first-class passengers, there were a goodly number of women like her, leaving home and husband for a foreign trip. After all, as she had often said, it was a good idea for husbands and wives to have vacations from each other. There was no real reason why two people should stick together in an endless daily intimacy because they were married….