“Well, I’ll tell you three things. Books and your mother and me. Say that over—out loud.”
He tried to enter into her mood. “Books and my mother and Jane.”
She caught at another thought. “It almost rhymes with Stevenson’s ‘books and food and summer rain,’ doesn’t it?”
“Yes. What a man he was—cheerful in the face of death. Jane, I believe I could face death more cheerfully than life——”
“Don’t say such things”—they had come to the little house on the terrace, “don’t say such things. Don’t think them.”
“As a man thinks—— Do you believe it?”
“I believe some of it.”
“We’ll talk about it to-night. No, I can’t come in. Dinner is at seven.” He lingered a moment longer. “Do you know what a darling you are, Jane?”
She stood watching him as he limped away. Once he turned and waved. She waved back and her eyes were blurred with tears.
In Jane’s next letter to Judy she told about the dinner.