She started as she heard the voice of the guard, though he was saying nothing but “Check your umbrella” to a man behind her. She sped across the marble floor of the great tapestry hall as a little, furry wild animal darts across an open space in the woods. She was thinking that she could not bear it if Pete were not there. How could she wait many minutes under the eyes of the guards, who must know better than any one else that no flesh-and-blood girl took any real interest in Egyptian antiquities? The round, unambitious dial at the entrance, like an enlarged kitchen-clock, had pointed to the exact hour set for the meeting. She ought not to expect that Pete, getting away from the office in business hours, could be as punctual as an eager, idle creature like herself. She had made up her mind so clearly that when she entered the night-blue room there would be nothing but tombs and mummies that when she saw Pete standing with his overcoat over his arm, in the blue-serge clothes she particularly liked, she felt as much surprised as if their meeting were accidental. She tried to draw a long breath. “I shall never get used to it,” she said. “If we had been married a thousand years, I should always feel just like this when I see you.” “Oh, no, you won’t,” he answered. “I hope the very next time we meet you will say, quite in a wife’s orthodox tone: ‘My dear, I’ve been waiting twenty minutes. Not that I mind at all; only I was afraid I must have misunderstood you.’” “You hope? Oh, I hope we shall never be like that.” “Really? Why, I enjoy the idea. I shall enjoy saying to total strangers, ‘Ah, gentlemen, if my wife were ever on time--’ It makes me feel so indissolubly united to you.” “I like it best as we are now.” “We might try different methods alternate years: one year we could be domestic, and the next, detached, and so on.” By this time they had discovered that they were leaning on a mummy-case, and Mathilde drew back with an exclamation. “Poor thing!” she said. “I suppose she once had a lover, too.” “And very likely met him in the room of Chinese antiquities in the Temple Museum,” said Pete, and then, changing his tone, he added: “But come along. I want to show you a few little things which I have selected to furnish our home. I think you’ll like them.” Pete was always inventing games like this, and calling on her to enter in without the slightest warning. One of them was about a fancy ball he was giving in the main hall of the Pennsylvania Station. But this new idea, to treat the whole museum as a sort of super-department store, made her laugh in a faint, dependent way that she knew Pete liked. She believed that such forms of play were peculiar to themselves, so she guarded them as the deepest kind of secret; for she thought, if her mother ever found out about them, she would at once conclude that the whole relation was childish. To all other lovers Mathilde attributed a uniform seriousness.