"Yes."
"Even if uselessly?"
"Yes." Her eyes met his squarely enough; there was no sign of flinching in them.
"I'm glad you understand. For that's going to be our life, you know."
"Yes, James; that shall be our life." They got up and took each other's hands for a moment, as though to seal their compact, looking each other steadfastly in the eyes meanwhile. They did not kiss again.
CHAPTER VIII
ONE THING AND ANOTHER
Seldom have we longed for anything so much as for the pen of a Fielding or a Thackeray to come to our aid at the present moment and, by means of just such a delightful detached essay as occurs from time to time in "Tom Jones" or "The Virginians," impart a feeling of the intermission that at this point appears in our story. There is nothing like a digression on human frailty or the condition of footmen in the reign of King George the Second to lift the mind of a reader off any particular moment of a story and, by throwing a few useful hints into the discourse, prepare him ever so gently to be set down at last at the exact point where he is to take it up again. That is making an art of skipping, indeed. We admire it intensely, but realize how impossible it is in this case. Not only is such a thing frankly outside our power, but the prejudice of the times is set against it, so our only course is to confess our weakness and plod along as best we may.
Why on earth every human being who ever knew him should not have known of his engagement as soon as it occurred—or long before, for that matter—Harry could never discover. That they did not, in most cases, was due partly to reasons which could have been best explained by James and partly to the fact that the person who is most careless of concealment in such matters is very often the one who is least suspected. And then so many men had been after Madge! So that when the great news burst upon the world at the dinner that Mrs. Gilson could not decently be prevented from giving, the surprise, in the words of ninety-nine per cent. of their well-meaning friends, was as great as the pleasure.