"Juliet," said the doctor soberly, turning to look searchingly down at her in the moonlight, "would you be willing to let me come often?"
Juliet looked up quickly. "So that you may see her?" she asked straightforwardly.
"Yes. I won't pretend it's anything else. I can tell you honestly that if there were no other reason I should want to come because of my old friendship for you and Anthony, and because this evening in your little home has given me a rare pleasure. I know of no place like it. But I'll tell you squarely that I want the chance to meet your friend often and at once. If I don't you will have other people coming out from town----"
"Yes," said Juliet, and something in the way she said it made him ask quickly: "Has that already happened? Am I too late?"
"I don't know whether you're too late, but I know that we've suddenly grown most attractive to another man from town. If you had gone into Rachel's home the odour of violets would have met you at the door. He sends them every few days."
"_Ah!_" said the doctor. It was not much of a comment, but it spoke volumes. He had been keen before--he was determined now. Violets--well, there were rarer flowers than those.
At the house there remained for the guests an hour before the fire, where Juliet brought in something hot and sweet and sour and spicy, which tasted delicious and brought her a shower of compliments while they drank a friendly draught to her. When she had left them, standing in an admiring group on the hearth-rug and wishing her happy dreams, they settled into luxurious positions of ease before the fire--a fire in the last stages of red comfort before it dies into a smoulder of torrid ashes.
"Anthony Robeson," said Wayne Carey, regarding the andirons fixedly over his bed-time pipe, "you're a happy man."
Anthony laughed contentedly. He had thrown himself down upon the hearth-rug with his head on a pillow pulled from the settle, and lay flat on his back with his hands clasped behind his neck. It was an attitude deeply expressive of masculine comfort.
"You're exactly right," said he. "And you would be the same if you would give up living in that infernal boarding-house. What do you want to fool with your first year of married life like that for? You told me that Judith was bowled over by our wedding, and was ready to go in for this sort of thing with a will."