LINDA LEE INCORPORATED

"Mrs. Bellamy Druce! Rather a mouthful, that."

"Is that why you make a face over it?"

"Didn't expect me to relish it, did you, Cinda?"

"I'm afraid I wasn't thinking of you at all, Dobbin, when I took it."

"Meaning, if you had been, you might have thought twice before taking?"

"No fear: I was much too madly in love with Bel."

"Was?"

"Dobbin!"

"Sorry--didn't mean to be impertinent."

"I don't believe you. Still, I'm so fond of you, I'll forgive you--this
once."

"Won't have to twice. I only--well, naturally, I wanted to know whether
or not it had taken."

"Taken?"

"Your matrimonial inoculation."

"I think one may safely say it has. I've grown so old and wise in
marriage, it really seems funny to remember I was ever an innocent."

"Four years----"

"Going on five."

"It's seemed a long time to me, too, Cinda--five years since these eyes
were last made glad by the sight of you."

"At least, time hasn't impaired your knack at pretty speeches."

"Nor your power to inspire them."

"I'm not so sure. To myself I seem ever so much older." Lucinda Druce
turned full face to the man on her left, anxiety feigned or real
puckering the delicately pencilled brows. "Doesn't it show at all,
Dobbin, the ruthless march of advancing years?"

The man narrowed critically his eyes and withheld his verdict as if in
doubt; but a corner of his mouth was twitching.

"You are lovelier today than ever, lovelier even than the memories of
you that have quickened my dreams----"

"All through these years? How sweet--and what utter tosh! You know
perfectly well your heart hasn't been true to Poll----"

"Unfortunately, the damn' thing has. Oh, I'm not pretending I didn't do
my level best to forget, tried so hard I thought I had won out. But it
only needed this meeting tonight to prove that the others were merely
anodynes for a pain that rankled on, as mortal hurts do always, 'way
down beneath the influence of the opiate."

"Truly, Dobbin, you've lost nothing of your ancient eloquence. That last
speech quite carried me back to the days when, more than once, you all
but talked me off my feet and into your arms."

"Pity I ever stopped talking."

"I wonder!"

"You wonder----?"

"Whether it's really a pity you never quite succeeded in talking me into
believing I loved you enough to marry you, whether we wouldn't all have
been happier, you, Bel, and I."

"Then you aren't altogether----"

"Hush! I haven't said so."

"No; but you've had time to find out."

"Perhaps...."

"And you know your secrets are safe with me."

"That's why I'm going to say--what I am going to say."

"O Lord! now I shall catch it."

"Don't be afraid, Dobbin, I'm not going to scold. But I know you so
well, how direct and persistent you are--yes, and how sincere--it's only
fair to tell you, the traditions of our kind to the contrary
notwithstanding, I'm still in love with my husband."

For a moment Richard Daubeney was silent, staring at his plate. Then he
roused with a light-hearted shrug and smile.

"And that's that!"

Lucinda nodded with amiable emphasis: "That's that."

The black arm of a waiter came between them, and the woman let an
abstracted gaze stray idly across the shimmering field of the table,
while the man at her side ceased not to remark with glowing appreciation
the perfection of her gesture, at once so gracious, spirited, and
reserved.

Never one to wear her heart on her sleeve, Lucinda. Look at her now: Who
would ever guess she had lived to learn much, to unlearn more, in so
brief a term of married life? Surely the sweet lift of her head, the
shadowy smile that lurked ever about her lips, the exquisite poise of
that consummate body bespoke neither disillusionment nor discontent. And
who should say the dream was not a happy one that clouded the accustomed
clearness of her eyes?

Unclouded and serene once more, these turned again his way.

"It's like you, Dobbin, to start making love to me all over again,
precisely as if my being married meant nothing, in the first minutes of
our first meeting in five years, without offering to tell me a single
thing about yourself."

"Nothing much to tell. Everybody knows, when you engaged yourself to
marry Druce, I rode off to the wars. Oh, for purely selfish motives! If
I'd stayed, I'd have made a stupid exhibition of myself one way or
another, taken to drink or something equally idiotic. So vanity prompted
me to blaze a trail across the waters for my beloved country to follow
when its hour struck."