"You really do—love me?"
"I really do." His eyes were on hers, and she saw his confidence change to certainty. "You're game!" he said, and kissed her triumphantly, in the crowded room, beneath the glaring lights and crepe-paper decorations. She did not care; she cared for nothing in the world now but him.
"Let's—go away—a little while by ourselves, out where it's dark and cool," she said hurriedly as they crossed the floor.
"Not on your life! We're going to have the biggest party this town ever saw!" he answered exultantly over his shoulder, and she saw his enjoyment of the bomb he was about to drop upon the unsuspecting group at the table. "The roof is off the sky to-night. This is a wedding-party!"
Louise and momma were upon her with excited cries and kisses, and Helen, flushed, laughing, trying not to be hysterical, heard his voice ordering drinks, disposing of questions of license, minister, ring, rooms at the St. Francis, champagne, supper, flowers. She was the beggar maid listening to King Cophetua.
CHAPTER XI
At ten o'clock on a bright June morning Helen Kennedy tip-toed across a darkened bedroom and closed its door softly behind her. Her tenseness relaxed with a sigh of relief when the door shut with the tiniest of muffled clicks and the stillness behind its panels remained unbroken.
Sunlight streamed through the windows of the sitting-room, throwing a quivering pattern of the lace curtains on the velvet carpet and kindling a glow of ruddy color where it touched mahogany chairs and a corner of the big library table. She moved quickly to one of the broad windows and carefully raised a lower sash. The low roar of the stirring city rushed in like the noise of breakers on a far-away beach, and clean, tingling air poured upon her. She breathed it in deeply, drawing the blue silk negligée closer about her throat.
The two years that had whirled past since she became Bert Kennedy's wife had taught her many things. She had drawn from her experience generalities on men, women, life, which made her feel immeasurably older and wiser. But there were problems that she had not solved, points at which she felt herself at fault, and they troubled her vaguely while she stood twisting the cord of the window-shade in her hand and gazing out at the many-windowed buildings of San Francisco.
She had learned that men loved women for being beautiful, gay, unexacting, sweet-tempered always, docile without being bores. She had learned that men were infuriated by three things; questions, babies, and a woman who was ill. She had learned that success in business depended upon "putting up a front" and that a woman's part was to help in that without asking why or for what end. She had learned that the deepest need of her own nature was to be able to look up to the man she loved, even though she must go down on her own knees in order to do it. She knew that she adored her husband blindly, passionately, and that she dared not open her eyes for fear she would cease to do so.