"Now, this man you have chosen—you do not care overmuch for lilies and butterflies and rosy-fingered dawns?"
"Not overmuch," she admitted sadly.
"Then what is it brings you together? What strange link of the spirit has been forged between you? To speak quite plainly, what do you see in him?"
"Yesterday we lunched together, and two days before that he got here in time for breakfast."
"And the engagement still holds?" I am no optimist.
"Before that we dined. Yes, I do not exaggerate. It was my suggestion. One sees so much unhappiness now-a-days, and I wished to be quite sure we were suited to one another."
"And you are convinced of the sincerity of the attachment?"
"Why, I feel for him as Mother does for the knife-and-boot boy, and Uncle Stephen for the charlady. We cannot be separated. It would be monstrous."
I ceased to be articulate. Victorine suddenly became radiant.
"We must always be together—at any rate for the duration of the War, you see. I eat under my meat and he is over. In flour and sugar—oh, how can I confess it?—I exceed. He is far, far below his ration. Apart we are failures; together we are perfect. We both saw it at once."