She laughed softly at her own ecstasy of exaggeration.  “The other Josh will come back,” she reminded herself, “and I must not forget to be practical.  This is episodic.”  These happy, superhuman episodes would come, would pass, would recur at intervals; but the routine of her life must be lived.  And if these episodes were to recur the practical must not be neglected.  “It’s by neglecting the practical that so many wives come to grief,” reflected she.  And the first mandate of the practical was that he must be rescued from that vulgar political game, which meant poverty and low associations and tormenting uncertainties.  He must be got where his talents would have their due, their reward.  But subtly guiding him into the way that would be best for him was a far different matter from what she had been planning up to last night’s moonrise—­was as abysmally separated from its selfish hypocrisy as love from hate.  She would persist in her purpose, but how changed the motive!

She heard him stirring in her—­no, their room.  Her face lighted up, her eyes sparkled.  She ran to the mirror for a final primp before he should see her.  She was more than pleased with the image she saw reflected there.  “I never looked better in my life—­never so well.  I’m glad I kept back this particular dress.  He’s sure to like it, and it certainly is becoming to me—­the best-fitting skirt I ever had—­what good lines it has about the hips.”  She startled at a knock upon the door.  She rushed away from the mirror.  He had small physical vanity himself—­she had never known any one with so little.  He had shown that he thought she had no vanity of that kind, either, and he would doubtless misunderstand her solicitude about her personal appearance.  Anyhow, of all mornings this would be the worst for him to catch her at the glass.

“Yes?” she called.

“Margaret,” came in his voice.  And, oh, the difference in it!—­the note of tenderness—­no, it was not imagination, it was really there!  Her eyes filled and her bosom heaved.

“Are you joining me at breakfast?”

“Come in,” cried she.

When the door did not open she went and opened it.  There stood he!  If he had greeted her with a triumphant, proprietorial expression she would have been—­well, it would have given her a lowered opinion of his sensibility.  But his look was just right—­dazzled, shy, happy.  Nor did he make one of his impetuous rushes.  He almost timidly took her hand, kissed it; and it was she who sought his shoulder—­gladly, eagerly, with a sudden, real shyness.  “Margaret,” he said.  “Mine—­aren’t you?”

Here was the Joshua she was to know thenceforth, she felt.  This Joshua would enable her to understand, or, rather, to disregard, so far as she personally was concerned, the Josh, tempestuous, abrupt, often absurd, whom the world knew.  But—­As soon as they went where the guides were, the familiar Josh returned—­boyish, boisterous, rather foolish in trying to be frivolous and light.  Still—­what did it matter?  As soon as they should be alone again—­