Before she alighted from the omnibus she saw, from her altitude, Osborn striding along the street.  He was not alone; Desmond Rokeby was with him, listening to something which Osborn was telling him eagerly.  Although Marie could not hear the words, she leaned over and looked down with delight upon her man whom she had chosen, so tall and smart, and fine, and young.  She loved the turn of his head, the swing of his shoulders, his quick tread and eager look, as if all life were unrolling before him like a map, and he could choose at his lordly will any one of the thousand roads upon it.  Osborn was speaking of his wife; he was telling Rokeby about the splendour of the game he had learned to play.  He was trying to tell Rokeby something of the wonders and beauties of one woman’s mind and heart; and he was telling him, too, of smaller things, of the comforts and attractions of home, of the little kingdom behind a shut front door, of the angel’s food an angel cooked, and all her benevolences and graces and mercies.

As he spoke, diffidently but glowingly, of these things, with his words rushing out, or halting over something that was not to be told, his attention was called to the omnibus top on which Marie sat; he did not know what called him, only that he was called, and there she was, leaning over, smiling between the soft rim of her furs and the down-drawn brim of her hat, with her big muff held up against her breast, cuddlingly.  Osborn gasped and stood hat in hand, with his face turned upwards.

“Have you seen a vision, man?” asked Rokeby.

“There’s Marie,” Osborn answered.

Marie descended daintily and crossed the street to the two men.  Her hair gleamed and her feet were so light that she seemed to dance like a shaft of sunshine.  At the moment she was a queen, as every pretty girl is at moments, with two subjects ready to obey.

Rokeby greeted her smilingly with admiration.  “Mrs. Kerr, Osborn talks of no one but you all day.  He was in the midst of a song like Solomon’s, only modernised, when that chariot of yours bore down upon him and cut it short.  How are you?  But I needn’t ask.  And when may I call?”

“Oh, sometime, old man!  We’ll fix a day,” said Osborn, signalling to a taxicab.  He jumped in after his wife, and Rokeby went on his way good humouredly.  “The perfect deluded ass!” he thought, “and may the dear chap ever remain so!”

Osborn explained to Marie.  “He needn’t call yet.  I’m hanged if he’s going to come around the loveliest girl in town in the afternoons, when her lawful husband isn’t in; and I’m equally hanged if he’s going to break in upon one of our very own evenings.  So as all the evenings are our very own, there’s nothing to be done about it, is there?  What do you say, Mrs. Osborn Kerr?”

“We don’t want anyone else,” said Marie.

“You do look sweet,” Osborn cried, “I want all the world to see me with you.  So where’ll we go?  Where’s the place where all the world goes?”