He moved across. From the carved black cherry box on the end of the reading table he found a Havana. His evening paper was there also. He picked up the paper and went round the divan. He sank down before the fire, but after lighting the cigar with all the ceremony of a priest kindling a sacred altar flame, he did not read.
The wind rose and drew the flames higher into the deep, broad flue. Somewhere out on the Avenue rose the gear-clack and purr of a ’bus. It was a wild, melancholy night outside. It would rain or snow before morning. But wind nor weather had no part or parcel with that home, inside. The room might have been in a castle in Spain for all the drear outside weather had to do with its comfort. The man felt with an overwhelming emotion that he had reached a safe harbor,—the hinterland of peace.
Madelaine had been overseeing bedtime rites in the nursery. Nathan’s cigar had scarcely an inch of finely powdered ash before he heard his wife’s step on the stair. As though he had never been in the room before, as though it were all a dream, he turned his head as she came across.
She had put off her dinner frock and was clothed now in silken lingerie—soft, trailing, beautiful things that accentuated her height and perfect figure. Like a cameo against ebony she fitted into that room; had she not been its creator? She paused and adjusted her hair. Beautiful hands they were, that gleamed white and deft in the half-light,—slender, characterful hands for taste and resolute purpose.
“Junior was a perfect dear about going to bed,” she remarked as she gave her tresses a final pat and turned toward her husband. “I’ll flatter your conceit enough, Mr. Man, to say that he grows more like his dad every day.”
Her voice was vibrant and mellow, like the room and the house. Queer how thoughts enter a man’s mind. Nathan could not help contrasting Madelaine’s ordering of her home and child with Milly’s. Milly—given even the same setting—would have had books, papers, interrupted sewing, baby’s clothing—oh, damn Milly. A vast sense of fulfillment welled up in Nathan’s throat. It veiled his vision for a moment. What if he had missed Madelaine that morning on the Hill Top?
Madelaine saw her husband was pensive. She drew a low cushion across before Nathan could get it for her. She sank down at his feet, and with a faint expression of amusement, her dark eyes fastened on the flames. She remained that way for a time, then leaned her head over against the man’s knee. Nathan’s hand stole down and smoothed her hair.
“Happy, dear?” she asked, as she had asked a thousand nights.
“I’m very happy, Madelaine,” he said huskily, like a boy.
“It pleases me to have you say that,” was the woman’s comment.