“Confound it all! It’s so embarrassing,” I thought distressfully. “It upsets my whole programme. It makes life more complex, and I am trying to make it more simple. It gives me new responsibilities, and my every effort is to avoid them. Worst of all, it seems to sound the death-knell of my youth. To feel like a boy has always been my ideal of well-being, and how can one feel like a boy with a rising son to remind one of maturity?”
Perhaps, however, it would be a daughter. Somehow that didn’t seem so bad. So to change the subject I suggested that we take a walk along the river. As we went through the Tuileries all of the western city seemed to wallow in flame. The sky rolled up in tawny orange, and the twin towers of the Trocadero were like arms raised in distress amid a conflagration. The river was a welter of lilac fire, while above the portal of the Grand Palace the chariot driver held his rearing horses in a blaze of glory. To the east all was light and enchantment, as a thousand windows burned like imperial gems, and tower and spire and dome shimmered in a delicate dust of gold.
“What a city, this Paris!” I murmured. “Add but three letters to it and you have Paradise.”
“Where you are, darleen, to me it is always Paradise,” said Anastasia.
In the tranquil moods of matrimony, how is it that one shrinks so from sentiment? On the Barbary Coasts of Love we excel in it. In books, on the stage, we revel in it; but when it comes to the hallowed humdrum of the home it suits us better to be curtly commonplace. This is so hard for the Latin races to understand. They are so emotional, so unconscious in their affection. Doubtless Anastasia put down my reserve to coldness, but I could not help it.
“Look here, Little Thing,” I said, as we walked home, “you mustn’t work any more. Let’s go to the country for a week or two. Let’s go to Fontainebleau.”
“How we get money?”
“We’ll use that extra hundred francs.”
“Yes, but when that is spend?”
“Oh, don’t worry. Something will turn up. Let’s go.”