Her colour showed not the faintest variation as she spoke. It was Guest who grew hot and embarrassed, and was at a loss how to reply. He need not have troubled himself, however, for Cornelia continued her exposition touching the superiority of American everything, over the miserable imitations of other countries, with hardly as much as a comma's pause for breath. Guest sat back in his corner, looking at her with every appearance of attention, but in reality his thoughts were engaged in following a bewildering suggestion. "They think we are a honeymoon couple." ... Suppose--it was folly, of course, but for one moment, _suppose they were_! He would be looking at his wife! She would smile across at him, and call him fond, silly little names. He would kiss her--she had beautiful lips to kiss! and hold her hand--it was a soft little hand to hold, and tease her about her shaded hair, and her sharp little nose, and her ridiculous, pointed shoes! They would get out at the terminus, but instead of bidding each other a polite good-bye, would drive off together in a fly, discussing joint plans for the evening. Later on they would have dinner at a little table in the great dining-hall of the hotel, criticising their neighbours, and laughing at their peculiarities. In the theatre they would whisper together, and when the curtain went up on the heels of a critical moment, he would see the tear-drops shining once more on her lashes.--It was a lonely business going off to a man's club, where nobody wanted you, or cared a brass farthing whether you came or went. Not that for a moment he wished to be married--least of all to Cornelia Briskett. There were a dozen things about her which jarred on his nerves, and offended his ideas of good taste. He objected to her accent, her unconventional expressions, her little tricks of manner; while on almost every subject her point of view appeared to be diametrically opposed to his own. In her company he would be often jarred, annoyed, and discomfited, but of a certainty he would never be bored! Rapidly reviewing his life for the last few years, it appeared to Guest that he had existed in a chronic state of boredom. If "we were a honeymoon couple," that dreariness at least would come to an end! He looked at Cornelia's ungloved left hand resting upon the dark cushions--she wore a ring, a wide, flat band of gold, with one fine diamond standing far out, in a claw setting. American ladies affect solitaire rings, as tokens of betrothal--did this mean that the honeymooning question was already settled? If it were so, the fact would account for the girl's absence of embarrassment in his own company; all the same, he did not believe it, for there was in her manner a calm, virginal composure, an absence of sentimentality, which seemed to denote that the citadel had not yet been stormed. Cornelia noted his gaze, without in the least guessing its meaning.