"I found a rose walking up the street, Lucy," he bellowed up the stairs,

"and I brought it home for the dinner table."

Lucy came down, flushed from her final effort over the trunks, but

gently hospitable.

"It's fish night, Elizabeth," she said. "You know Minnie's a Catholic,

so we always have fish on Friday. I hope you eat it." She put her hand

on Elizabeth's arm and gently patted it, and thus was Elizabeth taken

into the old brick house as one of its own.

Elizabeth was finding this period of her tacit engagement rather

puzzling. Her people puzzled her. Even Dick did, at times. And nobody

seemed anxious to make plans for the future, or even to discuss the

wedding. She was a little hurt about that, remembering the excitement

over Nina's.

But what chiefly bewildered her was the seeming necessity for secrecy.

Even Nina had not been told, nor Jim. She did not resent that, although

it bewildered her. Her own inclination was to shout it from the

house-tops. Her father had simply said: "I've told your mother, honey,

and we'd better let it go at that, for a while. There's no hurry. And I

don't want to lose you yet."

But there were other things. Dick himself varied. He was always gentle

and very tender, but there were times when he seemed to hold himself

away from her, would seem aloof and remote, but all the time watching

her almost fiercely. But after that, as though he had tried an

experiment in separation and failed with it, he would catch her to him

savagely and hold her there. She tried, very meekly, to meet his mood;

was submissive to his passion and acquiescent to those intervals when

he withdrew himself and sat or stood near her, not touching her but

watching her intently.

She thought men in love were very queer and quite incomprehensible.

Because he varied in other ways, too. He was boyish and gay sometimes,

and again silent and almost brooding. She thought at those times that

perhaps he was tired, what with David's work and his own, and sometimes

she wondered if he were still worrying about that silly story. But once

or twice, after he had gone, she went upstairs and looked carefully into

her mirror. Perhaps she had not looked her best that day. Girl-like, she

set great value on looks in love. She wanted frightfully to be beautiful

to him. She wished she could look like Beverly Carlysle, for instance.

Two days before David and Lucy's departure he had brought her her

engagement ring, a square-cut diamond set in platinum. He kissed it

first and then her finger, and slipped it into place. It became a rite,

done as he did it, and she had a sense of something done that could

never be undone. When she looked up at him he was very pale.




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