But she knew that it was not the things to be done which had kept her from him. It was rather a sense that safety lay in seeing as little of him as possible. And so, throughout the winter she had built about herself barriers of reserve. Yet there had never been a moment when he had dined with them, or when he had danced, or when he had shared their box at the opera, that she had not been keenly conscious of his presence.
"And so you think it is all so big—and useless?" He picked up the conversation where they had dropped it when the dance stopped.
She nodded. "A house like this isn't a home. I told Marie-Louise the other day that a home was a place where there was a little fire, with somebody on each side of it, and where there was a little table with two people smiling across it, and with a pot boiling and a woman to stir it, and with a light in the window and a man coming home."
"And what did Marie-Louise say to that?"
"She wrote a poem about it. A nice healthy sane little poem—not one of those dreadful things about the ashes of dead women which I found her doing when I came."
"How did you cure her?"
"I am giving her real things to think of. When she gets in a morbid mood I whisk her off to the gardener's cottage, and we wash and dress the baby and take him for an airing."
Richard gave a big laugh. "With your head in the stars, you have your feet always firmly on the ground."
"I try to, but I like to know that there are always—stars."
"No one could be near you and not know that," he told her gravely.