Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/105

Rh show (movies were then in their infancy) was much more entertaining. And a good play, where you saw modern actors, kept you so much better up-to-date, and rubbed the green moss off you in rolls. The beauty of out-of-doors had no attraction for her, nor flowers either, her morning-glories and wild cucumbers notwithstanding. She spent a good deal of time outdoors, walking; not, however, for the physical exhilaration of it, but simply "to reduce" (even then Stella was inclined to be a little plump) or to save the price of a car-fare, which she usually invested in candy. She was always nibbling at candy.

Often during the first few months of his marriage, grave doubts and misgivings assailed Stephen, but he was able to send them slinking away usually by comparing his present existence with that of a year ago. A year ago his evenings had been awful stretches of loneliness and unloveliness. Now each night there was a very pretty and always good-natured Stella waiting for him in a little sweet-smelling apartment; and after his evening meal there were distant sounds, far from unpleasing to him, of running water and rattling dishes, as he sat smoking and reading in his old Morris chair, wrapped round with his books and his rugs and a few treasured pieces of furniture unburied from a storehouse in Reddington.

Later, there was somebody sitting on the arm of his Morris chair, pressing against his shoulder, somebody soft and warm and alive, and his—all his, to do with as he pleased. No; he was not sorry that he had married Stella.