Adams she had not met again; once he had called, but impelled by a shrinking which was almost one of fear, she had turned back on the threshold and refused to see him.  Even Gerty she had tried to avoid since the afternoon in Kemper’s rooms, but Gerty, who was in her gayest mood, drove down every day “to overturn,” as she carelessly remarked, “the newest presents.”

“I’m heartily glad you’re going to Europe,” she said, “and I hope by the time you come back you’ll have lost that nervous look in your face.  It never used to be there and I don’t like it.”

At her words Laura threw an alarmed glance at the mirror; then she turned her head with a laugh in which there was a note of bitterness.

“It came there in my effort to make conversation,” she answered.  “I’ve been engaged to Arnold eight months and we’ve talked out every subject that we have in common.  Do you know what it is to be in love with a man and yet to rack your brain for something to say to him?” she finished merrily.

“That’s because you ought to have married Roger Adams, as I was the only one to suggest,” retorted Gerty, “then you’d have had conversation enough to flow on, without a pause, till Judgment Day.  It’s a very good thing, too,” she added seriously, “because the real bug-a-boo of marriage is boredom, you know.”

“But how can two people bore each other when they are in love?” demanded Laura, almost indignant.

The possibility appeared to her at the moment as little short of ridiculous, yet she knew, in her heart of hearts, that she faced, not without approaching dread, the thought of those two months in Europe; and she admitted now for the first time that beyond the absorption of their love, she and Kemper had hardly an interest which they shared.  Even the eyes with which they looked on Europe would be divided by the space of that whole inner world which stretched between them.  Yet because of the supremacy of this one sentiment she had striven to crush out her brain in order that she might have the larger heart with which to nourish the emotion which held them together.  In the pauses of this sentiment she realised that their thoughts sprang as far asunder as the poles, and as she looked from Gerty to the wedding presents scattered in satin boxes on chairs and tables, the fact that the step she took was irrevocable, that in three days she would be Kemper’s wife, that there was no possible escape from it now, produced a sudden sickening terror in her heart.  Then with a desperate clutch at her old fatalistic comfort, she told herself that it would all come right if she were only patient—­that with her marriage everything would be settled and become entirely simple.

Gerty was unpacking a case from a silversmith’s when Kemper came in; and he gave a low whistle of dismay as he glanced about the room strewn with boxes.

“By Jove, I believe they think we’re going to set up a business!” he exclaimed.