but wondered, and criticized with her mind; her love lay unvexed still, unperturbed, imperturbable.
She was luckier still; though it seemed that there could be nothing better to be desired or to be had than her love for Lucia, there was something better which she both desired and had. And she got up, moved by some tremor of an inner life within her. It was her life that faintly stirred; it was Charlie's also.
The clock on the stairs chimed twice, surely a mistake. But the mistake was endorsed by another clock in the room. How late he was, and how right to be late if he chose! For her, anyhow, it was bedtime. She welcomed that. It implied the awakening to another day—a day nearer.
Maud must have sat thinking for close on an hour, for it was scarcely past one when Lucia went downstairs. Her motor, which had brought her from the Opera, was waiting; the front door had already been opened, and she was just stepping into the porch when she met a man on the doorstep, who was coming in.
"Oh, Chubby," she said, "see me home. I go away to-morrow."
"I'll see you anywhere," said Chubby.
The motor whirred and buzzed, and the front door of the house was shut again with a soft thud. The windows of the car were shut. Lucia put the one next her down.
"Air, air," she said. "I want air. There isn't enough air. I should have made lots more if I had had the making of the whole thing. Oh, Charlie, she is a pearl—a pearl. Do—do be worthy of her."
Lucia felt immensely exalted at that moment. She felt it was a fine thing to say, a loyal thing to say, one that should certainly rouse his best feelings, his sense of duty, his love for his wife—his realization, if all was told, of her own nobility. The fact that fifteen seconds ago she had asked him to see her home did not trouble her in the least. It was a perfectly natural thing to do. Had Maud been on the doorstep, she would have added her vote; she would certainly have wished Charlie to go. But she had not said originally, when she met him on the doorstep, "She is a pearl, Charlie; good-night." She had asked him to see her home, and said it en route. She knew the distinction herself, but she cut it; she refused to recognize it.
"Yes, she is a pearl," said Charlie; "I have always known it. And—and it was that, was it not, that made our intimacy? We made friends through her"
