Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/21



N the last day of the journey she wakened at early dawn. The old Mariposa, coupled to the end of the train, rocked and careened over the single track. A fine dust had penetrated even through the double windows and settled in a gray film on her small and frivolous pumps on the floor. Later on, when the train stopped to let the eastern express pass like an explosion, she could hear the preparations for breakfast going on, the cook rattling pans in his cubicle and old William, who had been on the car since her grandfather's time, laying the table.

Once she even heard the shower bath going, and knew that either her father or Herbert was preparing for the day, taking advantage of the stop to do so. It was not easy to bathe on the train. There was a story that once old Lucius himself had been hurled in puribus naturalibus out of the shower and into the corridor, and was only saved by his bulk from going through a window!

The water ran for a long time. That would be Herbert. He was frightfully neat and clean, was Herbert. In the new detachment that had been hers since she wakened she considered Herbert, so tidy in mind and body, so well-mannered. Neat mannered, she said to herself, and smiled over it. And of course that was something to be said for a young man who brushed his teeth every night before he went to bed.

Suppose she married him? After all she would have to marry some one. She had played around long enough. She was twenty-three. "Mrs. Forrest." "Mrs. Herbert Forrest," she said to herself, and did not dislike the sound of it.

Herbert was in love with her. She had known it for a long time, and Herbert knew she knew it. Even her father and mother knew it. She could almost have repeated their conversations about it.