She went close to her husband, giving him the right piece of her face to kiss. "Which tooth was it?" said he. She showed him, tapping it. "It's a very little hole," he said, "and a good tooth!" She replied: "That's why Mr. Leaver says it should be stopped with gold. Now, good-night, dear! Drink the toddy, and don't be very late!"
Now, if only this woman had just gone straight away to bed and slept! And if that man, who had fully sworn to himself—mind you!—that the thing he had to do was to thrust his past delirium behind him, had but smoked his pipe, drunk his toddy, slept and waked next day a wiser man, might not the whole of the silly story have passed into oblivion, and left this prosy tale of ours without a raison-d'être? Quite possible! But, then, no such thing happened.
For Marianne seemed to hang fire and hesitate over her departure. She paused as she passed the open window; the sweet air, now that the rain had stopped, was pleasant after so much smoke. "What a beautiful moonlight night it's come out!" she said. But the moonlight grated on her husband. That moon was only a day older and a shade smaller than the full orb shining on the little Tophet garden and that Calypso of last night, robed in a stellar universe of moonsparks. Why need the rain-rack, flying northward after doing the garden so much good, leave conscious guilt exposed to the sight of Artemis—or Hecate—who knew all about it yesterday? Why not have gone on raining a little longer?
Marianne took another view. She said again, "How lovely the moon is, Tite!" in an unusual way for her. For she was not given to romantic sentiments. Her husband read in her manner a recognition of their rapprochement; for such it was, though no official recognition had been bestowed on distance, its condition precedent. He went and stood beside her; and, for her sake as well as his own—so he thought—gazed on the moon with all the effrontery of those experienced reprobates, Mr. Brown and Lord Smith. He forsook the toddy to do so, having just tried it with his fingers, and decided it could be touched with safety.
They stood side by side at the window; a minute or more, maybe. Then she said, almost as though conscious of some unscheduled ratification: "That'll do, dear! Now suppose I go to bed. The toddy will be cold." He followed her to the foot of the stairs, to endorse the cordiality of his send-off. There she kissed him again, but said, rather puzzling him: "I know you've forgiven me, Tite dear!"
He was moved as well as puzzled. "But, my dearest girl," said he, "what have I to forgive?"
"What I said in my letter." Whatever this woman's faults were, she was always downright.
"But, dear old goose, what did it all come to? You couldn't get away from home just now, or something. What did it matter? That was all right!" Oh, how he wished he could have added, "Come next time"! But, alas!—that was all over now; reasons why jostled each other in his brain. No more Royd!
"I didn't mean that," says the downright one, pushing facts home. "I meant what I wrote at the end, on the back of the last sheet. It was all nonsense, you know; I never meant it."
"I didn't see the back of the last sheet. I read it in a great hurry just going in to dinner last night."