“Marie,” he said, “hang lunch—until you understand me. This has been an extraordinary quarter of an hour. I didn’t know you had it in you. You women—you have me fairly beat. I just want—I hope—I long for you to believe me, when I tell you that rot she talked about divorce ... that is to say, I swear to you, that, except on circumstantial evidence, you wouldn’t have the ghost of a case. But, Marie, on circumstantial evidence, I—I don’t know that a judge and jury wouldn’t convict me.”
His wife was still looking at him critically, eagerly; and he met her eyes full, and saw, down in the depths wherein had been his delight, a great faith.
She believed him.
He tingled with joy. “I’ve been a fool,” he weighed out slowly. “We are; and we—we want looking after, you know. We can’t stand our wives forsaking us. We ask a lot of you, I suppose. Yes, it’s a lot.”
“Well,” she murmured, “we’ve always got it to give. We’re made that way.”
“Not all of you,” he denied, with a fleeting thought of Roselle.
“Tell me,” Marie asked, “what were you and she talking of so earnestly when I came in? It won’t matter anyway—but I’m just curious to know.”
“Shall I tell you?”
“I’ve asked.”
He answered very slowly, as if still weighing his words: “We were talking of a coming trip I have to make to Paris; I was asking her if she wouldn’t come, too.”
A little colour rose in his wife’s face.
“I’ll come instead,” she said clearly.
* * * * *
Osborn Kerr let himself into No. 30, Welham Mansions, laden with packages. He knew not what thank-offerings to make to heaven, so he made them to his family. Flowers and chocolate boxes hung about him.
He whistled gaily.
Only three hours ago he had parted from her after that memorable lunch and, now, here he was again with her in the place called home.
At the sound of his key she came out of her bedroom, dressed for dinner. The flat was quiet save for homely sounds from the kitchen. Osborn took his wife in his arms and kissed her. He stated exuberantly: “I came home early; I just had to.”
They went into the sitting-room hand in hand, and she sat down on the chesterfield before the fire. He did not want to sit down; he was too happy and restless and urgent. Now and again he hung over the back of the couch, to caress her, or whisper love words in her ear, and now and again he walked about touching this or that familiar object and finding new attractions in each. It was like the first coming to that flat when the very taps over the sink had been superior to all other taps under the rosy flicker of the new-kindled fire of love.
What an evening it was! He kept saying, breaking away from some other thing, to say it: “I can’t think this is all true. I can’t think that you are just you, and I am just I, all over again. And that we’re really going to be the two happiest souls on earth!”