the maid is prowling about and trying to listen. 'Shhh! The story
Laura will get out of her!"

While the maid served dinner, there could scarce have been a more
severely correct pair, though Carl did step on her toe when she was
saying to the maid, in her best offhand manner, "Oh, Leah, will you
please tell Mrs. Needham that I stole a handkerchief from my--I mean
from her room?"

But when the maid had been unable to find any more imaginary crumbs to
brush off the table, and had left them alone with their hearts and the
dessert, a most rowdy young "married couple" quarreled violently over
the washing-machine he still refused to buy for her.

Carl insisted that, as suburbanites, they had to play cards, and he
taught her pinochle, which he had learned from the bartender of the
Bowery saloon. But the cards dropped from their fingers, and they sat
before the gas-log in the living-room, in a lazy, perfect happiness,
when she said:

"All the while we've been playing cards--and playing the still more
dangerous game of being married--I've been thinking how glad I am to
know about your life. Somehow----I wonder if you have told so very
many?"

"Practically no one."

"I do----I'm really not fishing for compliments, but I do want to be
found understanding----"

"There's never been any one so understanding."

Silent then. Carl glanced about the modern room. Ruth's eyes followed.
She nodded as he said:

"But it's really an old farm-house out in the hills where the snow is
deep; and there's logs in the fireplace."

"Yes, and rag carpets."

"And, oh, Ruth, listen, a bob-sled with----Golly! I suppose it is a
little premature to call you 'Ruth,' but after our being married all
evening I don't see how I can call you 'Miss Winslow.'"

"No, I'm afraid it would scarcely be proper, under the circumstances.
Then I must be 'Mrs. Ericson.' Ooh! It makes me think of Norse galleys
and northern seas. Of course--your galley was the aeroplane.... 'Mrs.
Eric----'" Her voice ran down; she flushed and said, defensively:
"What time is it? I think we must be starting. I telephoned I would be
home by ten." Her tone was conventional as her words.

But as they stood waiting for a trolley-car to the New York ferry, on
a street corner transformed by an arc-light that swung in the wind and
cast wavering films of radiance among the vague wintry trees of a
wood-lot, Ruth tucked her arm under his, small beside his great
ulster, and sighed like