Page:MacGrath--The drums of jeopardy.djvu/406

392. Who was Kitty Conover? A nobody. Who was John Hawksley? Something to be.

Out of the storm into the calm; which is something of a reversal. Generally in love affairs happiness is found in the approach to the marriage contract; the disillusions come afterward. It was therefore logical that Kitty and her lover should be happy, as they had run the gamut of test and fire beforehand.

The young people were to leave for the West soon after the supper for three. At midnight Cutty's ship would be boring down the bay. Did Kitty regret, even a little, the rice and old shoes, the bridesmaids and cake, so dear to the female of the species? She did not. Did she think occasionally of the splendour of the title that was hers? She did. To her mind Mrs. John Hawksley was incomparably above and beyond anything in that Bible of autocracy—the Almanach de Gotha.

After supper Cutty brought in the old Amati.

"Play," he said, lighting his pipe.

So Hawksley played played as he never had played before and perhaps as he would never play again. We reach zenith sometimes, but we never stay there. But he was not playing to Cutty. Slate-blue eyes, two books with endless pages, the soul of this wife of his. He had come through. The miracle had been accomplished. Love.

Kitty smiled and smiled, the doors of her soul thrown wide to absorb this magic message. Love.