Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/36

34 "This is nice after all," she said. "I feel the spring to-day, and it always excites me and makes me sad. … And then I've been thinking. … It's a year to-day since we were married—does it seem so long to you?"

"Yes, longer. I feel as though I had been born married," Basil said with his quick radiant smile.

"Oh, I don't ! It seems like yesterday that we ran away! It's like a dream, the time has gone so fast. … And I was not born married! You are the same as you were before, but I am different. … The centre of gravity has been changed, and I am tottering!"

She said it laughing, but with a meaning that Basil answered by a look of passionate tenderness. Unconscious of the people about them, he put his hand across the table and touched hers. Teresa glanced into the mirror. It reflected a blur of bright colours, for most of the women were gaily dressed; a number of ordinary and rather dissipated faces and a few interesting ones. It reflected Basil's fine and vigorous profile and his brown colouring; and Teresa's face in three-quarters view, her dark, silky hair, rolled in a thick coil on her neck; her narrow eyes that varied in colour like sea-water, from grey to green or blue; her thin but sweetly curved and sensitive lips. The mirror showed also a corner of the next room and a table where two persons were