So, as fancy cooking was not a necessity to Maurice, and as he had resigned himself to an absence of any social life, and didn’t really mind smoking in a room with a silly paper on the walls (he had been very much touched when Eleanor told him what the paper meant to her in hope, and unsatisfied longing), he was perfectly contented in the ugly little house in the raw, new street.  In point of fact, music and books provided the Bread of Life to Maurice—­with solitaire thrown in as a pleasant extra!—­so “wittles and drink” did not begin to be a consideration until the first year of married life had passed.  Eleanor remembered the date when—­because of something Maurice said—­she began to realize that they must be considered.  It was on the anniversary of their wedding—­a cloudy, cold day; but all the same, with valiant sentimentality, they went—­Bingo at their heels—­to celebrate, in the meadow of those fifty-four minutes of married life.  As they crossed the field, where the tides of blossoming grass ebbed and flowed in chilly gusts of wind, they reminded each other of the first time they had come there, and of every detail of the elopement.  When they sat down under the locust tree, Eleanor opened her pocketbook and showed him the little grass ring, lying flat and brittle in a small envelope; and he laughed, and said when he got rich he would buy her a circle of emeralds!

“It’s confoundedly cold,” he said; “b-r-r! ...  Oh, I must tell you the news:  I got one in on ’em at the office this morning:  Old West has been stung on a big block on Taylor Street.  Nothing doing.  No tenants.  I’ve been working on a fellow for a month, and, by George!  I’ve landed him!  I told him the elevator service was rotten—­and one or two other pretty little things they’ve been sliding over, gracefully, at the office; but I landed him!  Say, Nelly, Morton asked me to go to a stag party to-morrow night; do you mind if I go?”

She smiled vaguely at his truthtelling; then sighed, and said, “Why, no; if you want to.  Maurice, do you remember you said we’d come back here for our golden wedding?”

“So I did!  I’d forgotten.  Gosh! maybe we’ll be grandparents by that time!” The idea seemed to him infinitely humorous, but she winced.  “What a memory you have!” he said.  “You ought to be in Weston’s!  They’d never catch you forgetting where some idiot left the key of the coal bin.”

“I sang ‘Kiss thy perfumed garments’; remember?”

“’Course I do.  Hit ’em again.”

She laughed, but ruefully; he had not spoken just that way a year ago.  She noticed, suddenly, how much older he looked than on that worshiping day—­still the blue, gay eyes, the wind-ruffled blond hair, the hilarious laugh that displayed the very white teeth; but all the same he looked older by more than one year:  his mouth had a firmer line; his whole clean-cut face showed responsibility and eager manhood.

Eleanor, clasping her hands around her knees, and watching the grass ebbing and flowing in the wind, sang, “O Spring!” and Maurice, listening, his eyes following the brown ripple of the river lisping in the shallows around the sandbar, and flowing—­flowing—­like Life, and Time, and Love, sighed with satisfaction at the pure beauty of her voice.  “The notes are like wings,” he said; “give us a sandwich.  I’m about starved.”