Man and Maid

Then she came back and poured out the tea and we both drank it silently.

The room looked so comfortable and home like, with its panelling of old

pitch pine, cleaned of its paint and mellowed and waxed, so that it

seems like deep amber, showing up the greyish pear-wood carvings. One

might have been in some room in old England of about 1699. Everything

looked the setting for a love scene. The glowing lamps, apricot shaded,

and the firelight, and the yellow roses everywhere, and two human

beings who belonged to one another and were young, and not cold of

nature, sitting there with faces of stone, and in each one's heart

bitterness. Again I laughed aloud.

The mocking sound seemed to disturb my bride. She allowed her tea cup to

rattle as she put it down nervously.

"Would you like me to read to you," she asked icily.

And I said "Yes."

And presently her beautiful cultivated voice was flowing along. It was

an article in the Saturday Review she had picked up, and I did not

take in what it was about. I was gazing into the glowing logs, and

trying to see visions, and gain any inspiration of how to find a way out

of this tangle of false impression. I must wait and see, and endeavor

when we get more accustomed to one another--somehow to let Alathea know

the truth.

When she finished the pages she stopped.

"I think he is quite right," she said, but I had not heard what the

argument was, so I could only say "Yes!"

"Will it interest you going to England?" I then asked.

"I dare say."

"I have a place there you know. Shall you care to live in it after the

war is over?"

"I believe it is the duty of people to live in their homes if they have

inherited them as a trust."

"And I can always count upon you to do your duty."

"I hope so."

Then I exerted myself and talked to her about politics and what were my

views and aims. She entered into this stiffly, and so an hour passed,

but all the time I could feel that her inner self was disturbed, and

more resentful and rebellious than ever. We had been two puppets making

conversation all the time, neither had said anything naturally.

At last the pretense ended, and we went to our separate rooms to dress

for dinner.

Burton had returned by now, and I told him of the detestable thing which

had happened, at which he was much concerned.