the fire from the box which it is kept in on a table near.
She had seen Burton do this no doubt. I love the smell of cedar burning.

Then she came back and poured out the tea and we both drank it silently.

The room looked so comfortable and home like, with its panelling of old
pitch pine, cleaned of its paint and mellowed and waxed, so that it
seems like deep amber, showing up the greyish pear-wood carvings. One
might have been in some room in old England of about 1699. Everything
looked the setting for a love scene. The glowing lamps, apricot shaded,
and the firelight, and the yellow roses everywhere, and two human
beings who belonged to one another and were young, and not cold of
nature, sitting there with faces of stone, and in each one's heart
bitterness. Again I laughed aloud.

The mocking sound seemed to disturb my bride. She allowed her tea cup to
rattle as she put it down nervously.

"Would you like me to read to you," she asked icily.

And I said "Yes."

And presently her beautiful cultivated voice was flowing along. It was
an article in the _Saturday Review_ she had picked up, and I did not
take in what it was about. I was gazing into the glowing logs, and
trying to see visions, and gain any inspiration of how to find a way out
of this tangle of false impression. I must wait and see, and endeavor
when we get more accustomed to one another--somehow to let Alathea know
the truth.

When she finished the pages she stopped.

"I think he is quite right," she said, but I had not heard what the
argument was, so I could only say "Yes!"

"Will it interest you going to England?" I then asked.

"I dare say."

"I have a place there you know. Shall you care to live in it after the
war is over?"

"I believe it is the duty of people to live in their homes if they have
inherited them as a trust."

"And I can always count upon you to do your duty."

"I hope so."

Then I exerted myself and talked to her about politics and what were my
views and aims. She entered into this stiffly, and so an hour passed,
but all the time I could feel that her inner self was disturbed, and
more resentful and rebellious than ever. We had been two puppets making
conversation all the time, neither had said anything naturally.

At last the pretense ended, and we went to our separate rooms to dress
for dinner.

Burton had returned by now, and I told him of the detestable thing which
had happened, at which he was much concerned.