“But—­but aren’t Nina and I to be in town Thursday?” she ventured,

“Shopping.  You can make that next week!” Richard said.  He loved her confusion.

“Then we surely will!  Thank you,” she said to Mrs. Hoyt.

“Thursday, then, at eight!” the caller said, departing.  Richard sauntered with them to their car, and returned to find Harriet half-scandalized, half-laughing.

“But do you want to dine with them?” she asked.

“Why not?” His smile challenged her, and she laughed hardily.

“I suppose there is no reason why not, Mr. Carter!”

“You can wear”—­he gestured—­“the black and goldy thing.  They’ll all be watching you!”

“Oh,” she said, considering earnestly, “I have a much handsomer one than that.  Blue and silver.  You’ve not seen it.”

“Blue and silver, then.”  Richard felt a distinct regret when the men he expected appeared.  There was but one figure of any interest to him on the shady, flower-scented terrace, and that was a woman’s figure in a white gown.

For two or three days he was conscious of a constant interest in her appearances and disappearances, a constant desire to please her.  He found himself liking a certain young man, in his city club, for no other reason than that he had asked admiringly for Mrs. Carter.  He found Harriet deeply interested in a book, and took the time to go into a bookstore and ask the clerk for something “on the same line as the Poulteney Letters.”  In Nina’s old Kodak album, idly opened, he was suddenly held by pictures of Nina’s governess, beautiful even in a bathing-suit, with dripping hair; lovely in the gipsy hats and short skirts of camp life.

Richard Carter was conscious of one mastering curiosity:  he wanted to know just how Harriet regarded him.  It seemed suddenly of supreme importance.  He thought of it in his office, and smiled to himself during important business conferences, wondering about it.  It seemed incredible to him, now, that his experiences of the past year had been so largely concerned with Harriet.  His wife’s companion, his daughter’s governess, his own capable and dignified housekeeper, the woman he had so hastily married, all seemed a different person, a quite visionary person, with whom just such businesslike arrangements had been possible.

But Harriet was beginning to seem to him a stranger who possessed at once the most mysterious and childlike, the most beautiful and the most baffling personality that he had ever known.  He made excuses to go home early, just to catch glimpses of this wife who was not his wife.  That he had ever taken a fatherly, advisory tone with this woman was unbelievable; her mere approach made him catch his breath and lose his coherency.  He had walked into her room—­he had patronized her—­he had asked her as casually to marry him as if she had been fifty, and as plain as she was lovely!