"I did not know it was raining," she said. "It is only light rain, and the air is so sweet, and the glow down there in the west is like heaven. How beautiful life is!"
"Ay, lady!" he answered, and stood there spellbound, watching her as she passed on slowly, and listening to her singing as she went.
A few days later she saw Lorrimer again. She found him in his room this time. He knew she was coming, and flushed with pleasure when he met her at the door. Ideala was not nervous; it all seemed a matter of course to her now. The books he had got for her from the library were where she had left them. He placed a chair for her beside his writing-table, and then went on with his own work. She had understood that she was to read in the library, but she did not think of that now; she simply acquiesced in this arrangement as she would have done in any other he might have made for her. A secretary was busy in another part of the room when she entered, but after awhile he left them. Then Lorrimer looked up and smiled.
"You are looking better to-day," he said. "Tell me what you have been doing since I saw you."
"Lotus-eating," she answered. "How lovely the summer is! Since I saw you I have wanted to do nothing but rest and dream."
"You have been happy, then?"
"Yes."
"Is he kind to you?"
"Oh—he! He is just the same. There is no change in my life. The change is in me."
"Then you mean to be happy in spite of him? I call that the beginning of wisdom. I know two other ladies who hate their husbands, and they manage to enjoy life pretty well. And I don't see why you should be miserable always because you happen to have married the wrong man. How was it you married him? Were you very much in love with him?"