His hand even went out slightly, as if to trace her outline against the air on which he beheld it, and thus prolong her presence.
"Goodbye for a little while," he murmured softly.
"For a little while," she breathed.
Then she turned. The spell was broken. She was just a woman in an evening gown, going up a stair.
The graceful back-draperies of the most beautiful costume-style in a hundred years gently undulated with her climb. Her free hand trailed the banister.
"Keep an eye out for the wallpaper," he said. "That will tell you."
She turned inquiringly, with a look of incomprehension. "How's that?"
"I meant, you'll know it by the wallpaper, when you come to it."
"Oh," she said docilely, but as though she still didn't fully understand.
She reached the top of the stairs and went over their lip, shrinking down toward the floor now as she went on, until her shoulders, then her head, were gone. The ceiling-halo cast by her lamp receded past his ken, down that same illusory incline.
He went into the parlor, first, and then the other downstairs rooms, latching each window that had not already been latched, trying those that had, flinging out the drapes and drawing them sleekly together over each one. Night air was bad, the whole world knew that; it was best kept out of a sleeping house. Then at last blotting out each welcoming lamp, room by room.
In the kitchen Sarah had left a bunch of fine green grapes set out on a platter, as another token of welcome to the two of them. He plucked one off and put it in his mouth, with a half-smile for her thoughtfulness, then put out the light in there too.
The last lamp of all went out, and he moved slowly up the ghoststairs in the dark, that was already a familiar dark to him though he'd been in this house less than half an hour. The dark of a man's own home is never strange and never fearful.
He found his way toward their own door, in the equal darkness of the upper hall, but guided now by the thread of light stretched taut across its sill.
He stopped a moment, and he stood there.
Then he knocked, in a sort of playful formality.
She must have sensed his mood, by the tenor of the knock alone. There was an answering playful note in her own voice.
"Who knocks ?" she inquired with mock gravity.
"Your husband."
"Oh? What does he say ?"
"'May I come in?'"
"Tell him he may."
"Who is it invites me to ?"
The answer was almost inaudible, but low-voiced as it was, it reached his heart.
"Your wife."
7
Arriving home from his office--this was about a week later, ten days at most--he hastened up the stairs to greet her, not having found her in any of the lower-floor rooms when he entered. He was cushioning his tread, to surprise her, to come up unexpectedly behind her and cover her eyes, have her guess who it was. Though how could she fail to know it was he, for who else should it be? But homecoming was still an exquisite novelty, it had to be decked out with all these flourishes and fancies; though it was repeated daily, it still held all the delightful anticipation of a first meeting, each time.
The door of their room was open and she was seated in there, docilely enough, in a fan-backed chair, only the top of her head visible above it, for she was looking away from the entrance. He stood for a moment at the threshold, still undiscovered, caressing her with his eyes. As he watched he could see her hand move, limply turning over the page of some book that was occupying her.
He started over toward her, intent now on bending suddenly down over the back of the chair and pressing his lips to the top of her head, coppery-gilt in the waning sunlight. But as he advanced, and as her hidden form slowly came into view, lengthening into perspective with his own approach, something he saw made him stop again, amazed, almost incredulous.
He changed his purpose now. Moved openly, in a wide circle about the chair, to take it in from the side, and stopped at last before it, with a sort of pained puzzlement discernable on his face.
She had looked up at discovery of him, closed her book with a little throaty exclamation of pleasure.
"Here you are, dear? I didn't hear you come in below."
"Julia," he said, in a tone of blank incomprehension.
"What is it?"
He described her form with a sketchy lengthwise gesture of his hand, and still she didn't understand. He had to put it into words.
"Why, the way you're sitting--"
Her legs were crossed, as only men crossed theirs. One knee reared atop the other in unashamed prominence, the shank of her leg boldly thrust forth, the suspended foot had even been swinging a little, though that had stopped now.
The sheath of her skirt veiled the full rakishness of the position, but shadowy outlines and indentations outlined it only too distinctly even so.
She had been caught in a very real grossness, not to be understood by any later standard of manners, but only when set against its own contemporary code of universal conduct. For a woman to sit like that would have drawn stares anywhere, then, even ostracism and a request that she leave forthwith. No woman, not even the flightiest, sat but with the knees both level and the feet both flat upon the floor, though one might be drawn back behind the other for added grace. Immorality lies not in the nature of an act itself, but in the universality of the accepted tenet which it flouts. Thus a trifling variation of posture can be more shocking, to one era of strictlymaintained behavior, than a very real transgression would be to another and more lax one. The one cannot understand the other, and finds it only a laughable prissiness. Which it was not at the time.
Durand was no more prudish than the next, but he saw something which he had never seen any other woman do. Not even the "young ladies" of Madame Rachel's "Academy," when he visited there during his bachelor days. And this was the wife under his own roof.
"Do you sit that way at other times too ?" he queried uneasily.
Subtly, with a sort of dissembling stealth, the offending knees uncoupled, the projecting leg descended beside its mate. Almost without the alteration being detected, she was once more sitting as all ladies sat. Even alone, even before only their own husbands.
"No," she protested virtuously, tipping horrified palms. "Of course not. How should I? I--I was alone in the room, and it must have come about without my thinking."
"But think if it should come about, some time, without your thinking, where others could see you."
"It shan't," she promised, tipping horrified palms at the very thought. "For it never did before, and it never will again."
She dismissed the subject by elevating her face toward him expectantly.
"You haven't kissed me yet."
The incident died out in his eyes, to match its extinction in his mind, in the finding of her lips with his.
8
Rosy-cheeked, dewy-eyed, winsome in the early morning sunlight, in a dressing sack of warm yellow whose hue matched the sunny glow falling about her. she quickly forestalled Aunt Sarah, took the coffee urn from her band, insisting as she did every day on pouring his cupful herself.
He smiled, flattered, as he did every day when this same thing happened.
Next she took up the small silver tongs, fastened them on a lump of twinkling sugar, carefully carried it past the rim of his cup, and holding it low so that it might not splash, released it.
He beamed.
"So much the sweeter," he murmured confidentially.
She gave her fingertips a brisk little brushing-together, though they had not as a matter of fact touched anything at first hand, placed a kiss at the side of his head, hurried around to her side of the table, and seated herself with a crisp little rustling.
It was like a little girl, he couldn't help thinking, pressing a little boy into playing at house with her. You be the papa, and I'll be the mamma.