Page:Dale - A Marriage Below Zero.djvu/72

66 companion. I looked at him. He was listening to the bride and bridegroom also. Shame upon us both.

"Does that interest you?" he asked.

"It disgusts me," I answered emphatically.

"Ah!"—I fancied he had awaited my answer a little anxiously. He looked satisfied.

"I do not believe in such demonstrative devotion," I went on. "There is nothing beautiful in it to me."

"No," he said. "It will never last. In two years it will take a very great effort on her part to keep him at her side. She will by that time probably think the effort not worth making."

I was silent. Perhaps at that moment something told me that my ideas were morbid. It is possible that quick as a flash of lightning my womanhood asserted itself. I say it is possible, and that is all.

"Elsie."

It was the first time he had uttered my Christian name. There was nothing at all tender in the way he pronounced it. I blushed slightly and looked a little conscious. Of course I could