"Keep it warm as long as you can. I will tell you when to serve it."
Katie stalked out, muttering something about the dinner being spoiled, but I paid no heed to her. My thoughts were too busy with conjectures and forebodings of the future to pay any attention to trifles.
The twilight deepened into darkness. I was just nerving myself to summon Katie and tell her to serve dinner when the door opened and Dicky's rapid step crossed the room. He switched on the light, and then coming over to me, lifted me bodily out of my chair.
"Was the poor little girl jealous?" he drawled, with his face pressed close to mine. "Well, she shall never have to be jealous again. We won't live in Marvin, naughty old town, full of beautiful models. We'll just go over to Hackensack or some nice respectable place like that."
At first my heart had leaped with victory. Dicky had come back, and he was not angry. Then as his lips sought mine, and I caught his breath, my victory turned to ashes. The regret or repentance which had driven my husband back to my arms had not come from his heart but from the depths of a whiskey glass.
It was two days after our quarrel over Grace Draper and her selection of a summer home for us before Dicky again broached the subject of leaving the city for the summer.
"By the way," he said, as carelessly as if the subject had never been a bone of contention between us, "that house I was speaking of the other night; the one Miss Draper thought we would like, has been rented, so we will have to look for something else."
I had no idea how he had managed to get rid of taking the house after his protégé had gone to the trouble of hunting one up, nor did I care. I told myself that as the girl's insolent assurance in selecting a house for me had been put down I could afford to be magnanimous. So I smiled at Dicky and said with an ease which I was far from feeling:
"But there must be other places in Marvin that are desirable. That day we were out there I caught glimpses of streets that must be beautiful in summer."
Into Dicky's eyes flashed a look of tender pleasure that warmed me. Taking advantage of his mother's absorption in her fish he threw me a kiss. I knew that I had pleased him wonderfully by tacitly agreeing to go to Marvin, and that our quarrel was to him as if it had never been. I wish I had his mercurial temperament. Long after I have forgiven a wrong done to me, or an unpleasant experience, the bitter memory of it comes back to torment me.