“Stand you!” He patted her shoulder. “Child, you’re the brainiest and the loveliest and finest woman I’ve ever met! Come now, Lady Wycombe, if you’ll take the Duke of Zenith’s arm, we will proambulate in to the magnolious feed!”
“Oh, you do say the funniest, nicest things!”
When they had finished the picnic supper he thrust his head out of the window and reported, “It’s turned awful chilly, and I think it’s going to rain. You don’t want to go to the movies.”
“Well—”
“I wish we had a fireplace! I wish it was raining like all get-out to-night, and we were in a funny little old-fashioned cottage, and the trees thrashing like everything outside, and a great big log fire and— I’ll tell you! Let’s draw this couch up to the radiator, and stretch our feet out, and pretend it’s a wood-fire.”
“Oh, I think that’s pathetic! You big child!”
But they did draw up to the radiator, and propped their feet against it—his clumsy black shoes, her patent-leather slippers. In the dimness they talked of themselves; of how lonely she was, how bewildered he, and how wonderful that they had found each other. As they fell silent the room was stiller than a country lane. There was no sound from the street save the whir of motor-tires, the rumble of a distant freight-train. Self-contained was the room, warm, secure, insulated from the harassing world.
He was absorbed by a rapture in which all fear and doubting were smoothed away; and when he reached home, at dawn, the rapture had mellowed to contentment serene and full of memories.