Duncan Street and I talked all the way home of Jimmie and his wife.  He didn’t agree with me in the least about Elise.  “She’ll be the making of him.  Such wives always are.”

But I held that he would lose something,—­that he would not be the same Jimmie.

* * * * *

Jimmie wrote plays and plays.  In between he wrote pot-boiling books.  The pot-boilers were needed, because none of his plays were accepted.  He used to stop in our office and joke about it.

“If it wasn’t for Elise’s faith in me, Miss Standish, I should think myself a poor stick.  Of course, I can make money enough with my books and short stuff to keep things going, but it isn’t just money that either of us is after.”

Except when Jimmie came into the office we saw very little of him.  Elise gathered about her the men and women who would count in Jimmie’s future.  The week-ends in the still old house drew not a few famous folk who loathed the commonplaceness of convivial atmospheres.  Elise had old-fashioned flowers in her garden, delectable food, a library of old books.  It was a heavenly change for those who were tired of cocktail parties, bridge-madness, illicit love-making.  I could never be quite sure whether Elise really loved dignified living for its own sake, or whether she was sufficiently discriminating to recognize the kind of bait which would lure the fine souls whose presence gave to her hospitality the stamp of exclusiveness.

They had a small car, and it was when Jimmie motored up to Washington that we saw him.  He had a fashion of taking us out to lunch, two at a time.  When he asked me, he usually asked Duncan Street.  Duncan and I have worked side by side for twenty-five years.  There is nothing in the least romantic about our friendship, but I should miss him if he were to die or to resign from office.  I have little fear of the latter contingency.  Only death, I feel, will part us.

In our moments of reunion Jimmie always talked a great deal about himself.  The big play was, he said, in the back of his mind.  “Elise says that I can do it,” he told us one day over our oysters, “and I am beginning to think that I can.  I say, why can’t you old dears in the office come down for Christmas, and I’ll read you what I’ve written.”

We were glad to go.  There were to be no other guests, and I found out afterward that Elise rarely invited any of their fashionable friends down in winter.  The place showed off better in summer with the garden, and the vines hiding all deficiencies.

We arrived in a snow-storm on Christmas Eve, and when we entered the house there was a roaring fire on the hearth.  I hadn’t seen a fire like that for thirty years.  You may know how I felt when I knelt down in front of it and warmed my hands.

The candles in sconces furnished the only other illumination.  Elise, moving about the shadowy room, seemed to draw light to herself.  She wore a flame-colored velvet frock and her curly hair was tucked into a golden net.  I think that she had planned the medieval effect deliberately, and it was a great success.  As she flitted about like a brilliant bird, our eyes followed her.  My eyes, indeed, drank of her, like new wine.  I have always loved color, and my life has been drab.