"I'd like to go," answered her friend, looking at his watch, "if I can get back to luncheon. Yes, there's plenty of time."
"Benedick, the married man," laughed Helen. "That I should ever live to see this air of domesticity!"
They crossed the Common, chatting idly, and both conscious that the frankness of their old intercourse was somehow lacking; that it was necessary to begin a new adjustment upon a basis different from the former one. They talked upon indifferent subjects, of what had occurred during the three weeks of Arthur's absence, playing the part of amiability without pleasure, endeavoring to simulate the old relations which no longer had real existence.
"Oh, Arthur," Helen laughed, suddenly, "let's not go on in this way! Let us quarrel, or something. Say a wicked epigram; do any thing, only don't be so eminently amiable!"
"My head is as empty of ideas," he returned laughing, in his turn, "as is a modern title-page of punctuation points. Besides, Edith has forbidden wicked epigrams."
"Does she therefore suppose she can suppress them?"
"Oh, I don't know," responded Fenton, good-humoredly. "I am not in as epigrammatic a frame of mind as I was."
"Yes; a sign I am growing inane and respectable."
"I can imagine you one about as easily as the other."
"That is bitter-sweet; a compliment and a flout."
"If I had said that," Helen observed, smiling, "you would have retorted, with a look of gloomy solemnity, that most things in life are bitter-sweet; unless, indeed, you felt called upon to phrase it that it had the advantage of most earthly matters by not being wholly bitter."
"Was I ever guilty of such commonplace attempts at epigrams as that?" returned Arthur. "If so it is certainly a good thing that I have given up repartee for matrimony."
"Oh, that is brilliant beside many of your attempts, I assure you. And as for your giving them up--I reserve my decision."
"You shall see, skeptic," he said lightly. "I expect to change the face of the whole world if necessary."
"It is a common error of ardent temperaments," she returned pleasantly, but with evident sincerity, "to assume that a state of feeling can change the world."
"But I must, I will," he began eagerly. Then the light died out of his face and he ended with a shrug.