Page:Ann Veronica, a modern love story.djvu/387



"Calmly! He said—you won't mind my telling you?"

"Not a bit."

"He said, 'Poor Alice has got no end!'"

"Alice's are different," said Ann Veronica, after an interval. "Quite different. She didn't choose her man.... Well, I told aunt.... Husband of mine, I think we have rather overrated the emotional capacity of those—those dears."

"What did your aunt say?"

"She didn't even kiss me. She said"—Ann Veronica shivered again—"'I hope it won't make you uncomfortable, my dear'—like that—'and whatever you do, do be careful of your hair!' I think—I judge from her manner—that she thought it was just a little indelicate of us—considering everything; but she tried to be practical and sympathetic and live down to our standards."

Capes looked at his wife's unsmiling face.

"Your father," he said, "remarked that all's well that ends well, and that he was disposed to let bygones be bygones. He then spoke with a certain fatherly kindliness of the past...."

"And my heart has ached for him!"

"Oh, no doubt it cut him at the time. It must have cut him."

"We might even have—given it up for them!"

"I wonder if we could."

"I suppose all IS well that ends well. Somehow to-night—I don't know."

"I suppose so. I'm glad the old sore is assuaged. Very glad. But if we had gone under—!"

They regarded one another silently, and Ann Veronica had one of her penetrating flashes.