England -- Fiction; Honeymoons -- Fiction; Love stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction
A long silence in the train that meant to go to Warwick was spent by
each in the same tangle of puzzle and conjecture. They had the carriage
to themselves. Her eyes were on the green changing picture framed by the
window; his eyes noted the firm, pretty line of her chin, the way her
hair grew, the delicate charm of the pale roses under the curve of her
hat-brim--the proud carriage of head and neck; he liked the way she held
herself, the way her hands lay in her lap, the self-possession and
self-respect that showed in every line of that gracious figure.
The four walls of the carriage seemed to shut them in with a new and
deeper intimacy than yesterday's. He would have liked to hold her hand
as he had held it on the way to Richmond--to have her shoulder lightly
touching his and to sit by her and watch the changing of that green
picture from which she never turned her eyes. And all the time the two
alternatives seesawed at the back of his mind: "Mr. and Mrs. or Mr. and
Miss?"
Her eyes suddenly left the picture and met his. In that one glance she
knew what sort of thoughts had been his, and knew also quite surely and
unmistakably, as women do know such things, that the relations between
them had been changed by that mock marriage--that now it would not be he
who would make the advances. That he was hers for the asking, she knew,
but she also knew that there would have to be asking, and that asking
hers. She knew then, as well as she knew it later, that that act had set
a barrier between them and that his would never be the hand to break it
down; a barrier strong as iron, behind which she could, if she would,
remain alone forever--and yet a barrier which, if she chose that it
should be so, her choice could break at a touch, as bubbles are broken.
She felt as perhaps a queen in old romance might have felt traveling
through the world served only by a faithful knight. That they had held
each other's hand on their wedding-day had been an accident. This would
never happen again--unless she made it happen.
"We must have our letters sent to the post-offices where we go," she
said, suddenly, turning to the problem at the back of her mind. "Then
the aunts can call me 'Mrs.' when they write to me. I suppose they'll
want to _call_ me that?"
"Mrs. Basingstoke," he said, slowly. "Yes, it seems likely that they
_will_ want to."
"Then," she went on, "we needn't pretend to the hotel people that we're
married. They'd be sure to find out we weren't, or something, and we
should always be trembling on the perilous edge of detection. I couldn't
bear to be always wondering whether the landlord had found us out."
"It would be intolerable," he agreed, deeply conscious of the admirable
way in which she grasped this delicate nettle. "Whereas. . . ."
"Whereas if we're Mr. and Miss Basingstoke at our hotels, and Mr. and
Mrs. at the post-office, it's all as simple as the Hebrew alphabet."
"The Hebrew. . . ?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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