Suddenly Mary opened her arms. "Home," she whispered, "home." Tears started to her eyes. With a caressing movement she leant her face against the wall, as to the cheek of her lover.
But emotion lay deep in Mary--she was ashamed that it should rise to facile tears. "Silly girl," she thought, and drying her eyes proceeded more calmly to her final task, which was to change her dress for one fitted to honor Stefan's homecoming.
Hardly was she ready when she heard his feet upon the stair. Her heart leapt with a double joy, for he was springing up two steps at a time, triumph in every bound. The door burst open; she was enveloped in a whirlwind embrace. "Mary," he gasped between kisses, "I've sold the boy--sold him for a hundred! At the very last place--just as I'd given up. You beloved oracle!"
Then he held her away from him, devouring with his eyes her glowing face, her hair, and her soft blue dress. "Oh, you beauty! The day has been a thousand years long without you!" He caught her to him again.
Mary's heart was almost bursting with happiness as she clung to him. Here, in the home she had prepared, he had brought her his success, and their love glorified both. Her emotion left her wordless. Another moment, and his eyes swept the room.
"Why, Mary!" It was a shout of joy. "You magician, you miracle-worker! It's beautiful! Don't tell me how you did it--" hastily--"I couldn't understand. It's enough that you waved your hand and beauty sprang up! Look at my little faun dancing--we must dance too!" He lilted a swaying air, and whirled her round the room with gipsy glee. His face looked like the faun's, elfin, mischievous, happy as the springtime.
At last he dropped into a chair. Then Mary fetched her teakettle. They quenched their thirst, she shared his cigarette, they prattled like children. It was late before they remembered to go out in search of dinner, hours later before they dropped asleep upon the gilded Janus-faced couch that had become for Mary the altar of a sacrament.
Mary's original furnishings had cost her less than a hundred dollars. In the first days of their housekeeping she made several additions, and Stefan contributed a large second-hand easel, a stool, and a piece of strangely colored drapery for the divan. This he discovered during a walk with Mary, in the window of an old furniture dealer, and instantly fell a victim to. He was so delighted with it that Mary had not the heart to veto its purchase, though it was a sad extravagance, costing them more than a week's living expenses. The stuff was of oriental silk, shot with a changing sheen, of colors like a fire burning over water, which made it seem a living thing in their hands. The night they took it home Stefan lit six candles in its honor.