'I won't be contradicted. Not to-day.'
Corinne was still silent. But Mrs Henderson, now frankly amused, asked:—
'Why the to-day, Henry?'
'Oh, I don't know. Just the way I feel,' said he; and ushered her with mock politeness into the front room, then, gallantly, almost nonchalantly, took the elbow of the unresisting Corinne and led her toward the kitchen.
Humphrey lighted a cigarette and watched them go. Then with a slight heightening of his usually sallow colour, followed his hostess into the living-room.
It will be evident to the reader that among these four young persons, rather casually thrown together in the first instance, something of an 'understanding' had grown up.
There had been a furtive delight about their first gathering at Humphrey's rooms, a sense of exciting variety in humdrum village life, the very real and lively pleasure of exploring fresh personalities.
Of late years, looking back, it has seemed to me that Mildred Henderson never really belonged in Sunbury, where a woman's whole duty lay in keeping house economically and as pleasantly as might be for the husband who spent his days in Chicago. And in bearing and rearing his children. I never knew anything of her earlier life, before Arthur V. Henderson brought her to the modest house on Chestnut Avenue. I never could figure why she married him at all. Marriages are made in so many places besides Heaven! He used to like to hear her play.
In those days, and a little later, I judged her much as the village judged her—peering out at her through the gun-ports in the armour plate of self-righteousness that is the strong defence of every suburban community. But now I feel that her real mistake lay in waiting so long before drifting to her proper environment in New York. Like all of us, she had, sooner or later, to work out her life in its own terms or die alive of an atrophied spirit. She had gifts, and needed, doubtless, to express them. I can see her now as she was in Sunbury during those years—little, trim, slim, with a quick alert smile and snappy eyes. Not a beautiful woman, perhaps not even an out-and-out pretty one, but curiously attractive. She had much of what men call 'personality.' And she was efficient, in her own way. She never let her musical gift rust; practised every day of her life, I think. Including Sundays. Which was one of the things Sunbury held against her.
Humphrey, too, was using Sunbury as little more than a stop gap. We knew that sooner or later he would strike his gait as an inventor. He was quiet about it. Much thought, deep plans, lay back of that long wrinkly face. While he kept at it he was a conscientious country editor. But his heart was in his library of technical books, and in his workshop in the old Parmenter barn. He must have put just about all of his little inheritance into the place.