I made no reply, and, for a long time, we sat staring at the fire until Dicky’s entrance came as a welcome interruption.

I went sedately to the door to meet him, although I was so glad to see him that a dance step would more appropriately have expressed my feelings, and returned his warm kiss and greeting.  He kept my hand in his as he came down to the fire, not even releasing it when he kissed his mother, who still maintained the rigid dignity with which she surrounded herself when displeased.

“Well,” Dicky said, manfully ignoring any hint of unpleasantness, “this is what I call comfortable, coming home to a fire and a welcome like this on a dreary day.”

There was a note of forced jollity in his voice that made me look up quickly into his eyes.  As they looked into mine, I caught a glimpse of something half-hidden, half-revealed, something fiercely sombre, which frightened me.

“What had happened,” I asked myself, with a little clutch at my heart, “to make Dicky look at me in this way?” I had a longing to take him away where we could be alone.

I was glad when my mother-in-law rose stiffly from her chair.

“If you are too much occupied, Margaret,” she remarked, icily, “I will go and tell Katie that Richard is here, and that she may serve dinner immediately.”

She swept out of the room majestically, and as the door closed after her Dicky caught me in his arms and clasped me so closely that I was frightened.

“Tell me you love me,” he said tensely, “better than anybody in the world or out of it.”  His eyes were glowing with some emotion I could not understand.  I felt my vague uneasiness of his first entrance deepen into real foreboding of something unknown and terrible coming to me.

“Why, of course, you know that, sweetheart,” I replied.  “There is no one for me but just you!  But what is the matter?  Something must be the matter.”

“Where did you get that idea?” he evaded.  “I just wanted to be sure, that’s all.  Wait here for me—­I’ll dash up and get some of the dust off in a jiffy before dinner.”

I spent an anxious interval before, he came down, for, despite his denials, I felt that something out of the ordinary must have happened to cause his queer, passionate outburst.

When he returned to, the living room, it was with no trace of any emotion, and throughout the dinner, while not so given to conversation as usual, he showed no indication that he was at all disturbed.

But I was very glad when the dinner was over, and we returned to the living-room fire.  And when, after a few minutes, my mother-in-law yawned sleepily and went to her room, I drew a deep breath of relief.

Dicky drew my chair close to his, and we sat for a long time looking at the leaping flames, only occasionally speaking.

It was at the end of a long silence that Dicky turned toward me, with eyes so troubled that all my fears leaped up anew.  I sprang to my feet.