“You had better cultivate the feeling. He became a saint eventually. Aline will help to make you one.”
If plain indication of another's infirmities can tend to qualify him for canonisation, Aline certainly justified Jimmie's statement. She did not confer her pardon so readily on the doubting disciple. His offence had been too rank. It was not merely a question of his saying a credo and then taking her into his arms. She exacted much penance before she permitted this blissful consummation. He had to woo and protest and humble himself exceedingly. But when she had reduced him to a proper state of penitence, she gave him plenary absolution and yielded to his kiss, as she had been yearning to do since the beginning of the interview. After that she settled down to her infinite delight. Nothing was lacking in the new rapturous scheme of existence. The glory of Jimmie was vindicated. Tony had come back to her. The bars to their marriage had vanished. Not only was Tony a man of substance with the legacy of eight thousand pounds that had been left him, and therefore able to support as many wives as the Grand Turk, but Jimmie no longer had to be provided for. The wonder of wonders had happened; she could surrender her precious charge with a free conscience and a heart bursting with gratitude.
Thus the happiness of each pair of lovers caught a reflection from that of the other, and its colour was rendered ever so little fictitious, unreal. The light of spring sunrise, exquisite though it is, invests things with a glamour which the light of noon dispels. The spectacle of the young romance unfolding itself before the eyes of Jimmie and Norma completed their delicious sense of the idyllic; but the illusive atmosphere thus created caused them to view their own romance in slightly false perspective. Essentially it was a drama of conflict—themselves against the pettinesses and uglinesses of the world; apparently it was a pastoral among spring flowers.
Another cause that contributed to Norma's unconcern for the future was her exaggerated sense of the man's loftiness of soul. Instead of viewing him as a lovable creature capable of the chivalrous and the heroic and afforded by a happy fate an opportunity of displaying these qualities—for the opportunity makes the hero as much as it does the thief—she grovelled whole-sexedly before an impossible idol imbued with impossible divinity. While knitting silk ties and devising with him the preparation of foodstuffs (which she did not realise he would not be able to afford) she was conscious of a grace in the trifling, all the more precious because of these little earthly things midway between the empyrean and the abyss which they respectively inhabited. In the deeply human love of each was a touch of the fantastic. To Jimmie she was the Princess of Wonderland, the rare Lady of Dreams; to Norma he appeared little less than a god.
She was talking one evening with Connie Deering in a somewhat exalted strain of her own unworthiness and Jimmie's condescension, when the little lady broke into an unwonted expression of impatience.
“My dear child, every foolish woman is a valet to her hero. You would like to clean his boots, wouldn't you?”
“My dear Connie,” cried Norma, alarmed, “whatever is the matter?”
“I think you two had better get married as quickly as possible. It is getting on one's nerves.”
Norma stiffened. “I am sorry—” she began.
Connie interrupted her. “Don't be silly. There's nothing for you to be sorry about.” She brightened and laughed, realising the construction Norma had put upon her words. “I am only advising you for your good. I had half an hour's solitary imprisonment with Theodore Weever this afternoon. He always takes it out of me. It's like having a bath with an electric eel. He called this afternoon to get news of you.”