"Perhaps it's the house," he replied vaguely. "I wish we could get out
of here for a little while. After lunch I want you to come to walk
with me. Will you?"
"Where, Don?"
He smiled.
"In the park."
"What an odd fancy!" she answered.
"Here I get you all mixed up with your father and mother and the
Queen," he ran on. "I want to talk to you alone."
He sounded more natural to her when he talked like that.
"All right, Don, though there are a hundred things I ought to do this
afternoon. And I must decide about going to the mountains with Dolly.
What _were_ those other plans you cabled me about?"
"Those are what I want to talk over with you," he answered.
"What are they? I'm dying to know."
"I'll tell you in the park. Now I'll go, so that you'll have time to
do some of the hundred things you want to do."
He turned.
"Don't you want to--to--"
She held out her arms to him. He kissed her lips. Then she seemed to
come back to him as she had been before she sailed. He could have said
all he wished to say then. But her mother was calling her.
"I'll be here at two. And, this once--you must cancel every other
engagement."
"Yes, Don."
She came to the door with him, and stood there until he turned the
corner. He did not know where to go, but unconsciously his steps took
him downtown. He stopped at a florist's and ordered a dozen roses to
be sent back to the house. He stopped to order a box of her favorite
bonbons. Then he kept on downtown toward the office of Carter, Rand &
Seagraves. But this was the first day of his vacation, and so he had
no object in going there. He must find a place to lunch. He came to a
dairy lunch, and then he knew exactly what it was he needed. He needed
Sally Winthrop to talk over his complication with him.
As he made his way to the counter for his sandwich and coffee, he
frowned. He had told her that he would surely need her. Now she was
gone. He suddenly recalled that she had not even left her address.
Only two days before he had been discussing with her the final details
of the house awaiting Frances, and she had made him feel that
everything was perfect.
"She will love it," she had assured him.
It was as if he heard her voice again repeating that sentence. Once
again he reacted to her enthusiasm and saw through her eyes. She had
made him feel that money--the kind of money Stuyvesant stood for--was
nonsense. A salary of twelve hundred a year was enough for the
necessities, and yet small enough to give his wife an opportunity to
help.
"When the big success comes," she had said to him, "then Frances can
feel that it is partly her success too. A woman doesn't become a wife
by just marrying a man, does she? It's only when she has a chance to
help that she can feel herself really a wife."
As she said it he felt that to be true, although to him it was a
brand-new point of view.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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