I cannot tell you how merry we were in that moment or how in love with life. I cannot recall what tender, broken words were said or what toasts were drunk. But I remember well enough the faces of Eunice and Hobart Eddy; and I think that the holly-wreathed mirrors must have found it difficult to play the artist and suggest, because that which they had merely to reflect was so much more luminous.
In the midst of all, Nichola, bringing more glasses, spoke at my elbow.
“Mem,” she asked, “air them two goin’ to get marrit?”
“Yes, Nichola,” I said, “yes, they are. They are!”
Nichola stood looking at me and winking fast, as if the air were filled with dust. And then came that curious change in her face which I had seen there before: a look as if her features were momentarily out of drawing, by way of bodying forth some unwonted thought.
“I made that match,” Nichola acknowledged briefly.
“Nichola!” I said in bewilderment.
“It’s so,” she maintained solemnly; “didn’t I say a word to him this afternoon—a word about the universe? He begun to understand how to act. For the love of heaven, did I not say some good would come?”
“You did say so, Nichola,” I answered, “and certainly the good has come.”
“Che!” said Nichola, nodding her head, “I am sure about all things, me.”