through the dining room to a sheltered alcove where a table laid for two, decorated with just the proper flowers, awaited them.
“You must feel like a feudal baron,” she whispered to him, “to whom everything comes as a matter of right.”
He smiled. “I feel like an animated National Bank, to tell you the truth.”
“Yet money has its uses,” she smiled, when they were seated.
He nodded. “So I’ve been led to believe,” he said. “I don’t know, really—I’ve always had it, you know—so perhaps I don’t actually realize what it means. There are times when I’ve found it to be more of a disadvantage than—but we’d better order first and talk later. I’m sure you must be perfectly starved.”
“I am,” she admitted. “Don’t forget the oysters.”
They chatted idly for awhile, until the first part of the dinner was finally served. It made little difference to Val what they talked about—rather, what she talked about. It was enough for him that he heard her voice; that he was sitting opposite her at table, that they were eating together, living a small fraction of their lives together, with each other. Externals hardly mattered; here was his woman—and at present she was with him to the exclusion of the whole world.
Something of what he was thinking must have flashed into her mind like the ghost of a shadow—it must have been as intangible and as nebulous as that, because Val himself had not realized concretely the thoughts that were running through his mind. She looked at him, serious for perhaps the first time that evening—an appraising glance, a glance that took in every part of him, that seemed to dissect him, almost; her glance at
