d sweet intimacy. We were to tell each
other everything. There was delight in that. There was the delight of
looking ahead and planning the meetings that should be ours in other
places, until at last John himself came to realize that in our loving
friendship was nothing unbeautiful, or unbeneficent, and meetings would
happen when or where we pleased, the world silenced by the husband's
approval.

So I did not take Harry Colemain's well-meant advice, and leave Aiken.

For a while it would suffice John to know that Lucy intended to stand
by him and be the keeper of his house; to put his interests first, and
to make up to him in dutifulness and economy for the love which she
could not but reserve. Yes, indeed! Riding slowly through the spring
woods, I made bold to preach a gospel of new life to her, and she
listened very meekly, like a blessed angel, and she felt sure that from
me she would derive the will and the strength. Mostly it was a gospel
of economy that I preached and how best she might help her husband back
upon his feet. And before his return from Palm Beach she had made a
beginning. She bought a book to keep accounts in, and she got together
all the bills she could lay hands on, and added them up to an appalling
total (several, for it came different each time) and she stacked the
bills in order of their pressingness, with the requests for payment
from lawyers and collectors on top, and she felt an unparalleled glow
of virtue and helpfulness.

And one day she took Jock and Hurry in the runabout (Cornelius Twombly
behind) and drove to the station to welcome John home. How sweet the
sight of those three faces must have seemed to him after absence!
Indeed they had seemed very sweet to me as I looked into them just
before they drove stationward. I was not to show up for two or three
days. That was one compromise on Harry Colemain's advice. It would
show John that Lucy and I were not entirely engrossed in each other's
society. It would give him time to turn around and see how he liked
the fact that Lucy was going to stick to him, and in many ways be a
better wife to him. It would give me an opportunity to see, and be
seen by many people. It would, in short, be a beginning of knocking on
the head and silencing most of the talk that there had been about Lucy
and me.

When you have a secret you might as well do your best to keep it.

So I did not see John Fulton for three days after his return from P