"No, but the old lady can't do much harm there. She'll not last another
six months. She may leave Margaret a slice, but it won't be much of a
slice, for Parker could fight if it was. Leila's pretty safe. We'll
have to go to that wedding, by the way!"
"Oh, Greg, the fun of going places together!" She was her happiest self
again. His mother and Alice Valentine and everything else but their
great joy was forgotten as they lingered over their luncheon and
planned for their wedding day.
If they could only have been alone together, always, thought the
new-made wife, when two perfect weeks on the powerful motor boat were
over, and all the society editors were busily announcing that Doctor
and Mrs. James Warren Gregory were furnishing their luxurious apartment
in the Rotterdam, where they would spend the winter. They were so happy
together; there was never enough time to talk and to be silent, never
enough of their little luncheons all by themselves, their theatre
trips, their afternoon drives through the sweet, clear early winter
sunshine on the Park.
Always in the later years Rachael could feel the joy of these days
again when she caught the scent of fresh violets. Never a day passed
that Warren did not send her or bring her a fragrant boxful. They
quivered on the breast of her gown, and on her dressing-table they made
her bedroom sweet. Now and then when she and Warren were to be alone
she braided her dark hair and wound it about her head, tucking a few
violets against the rich plaits, conscious that the classic simplicity
of the arrangement enhanced her beauty, and was pleased in his pleasure.
It suited her whim to carry out the little affectation in her soaps and
toilet waters; he could not pick up her handkerchief or hold her wrap
for her without freeing the delicate faint odor of her favorite flower.
When they met downtown for dinner there was always the little ceremony
of finding the florist, and all the operas this winter were mingled for
Rachael with the most exquisite fragrance in the world.
These days were perfect. It was only when the outside world entered
their paradise that anything less than perfect happiness entered, too.
Rachael's old friends--Judy Moran, Elinor, and the Villalongas--said,
and said with truth, that she had changed. She had not tried to change,
but it was hard for her to get the old point of view now, to laugh at
the old jokes, to listen to the old gossip. She had been cold and
wretched only a year before, but she had had the confident
self-sufficiency of a gypsy who walks bareheaded and irresponsible
through a world whose treasure will never come her way. Now Rachael,
tremulous and afraid, was the guardian of the great treasure, she knew
now what love meant, and she could no longer face even the thought of a
life without love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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