Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/161

 "So that's the way you are putting it to yourself! But how will Mary like that?"

"Oh, Mary"—Dulcie moved restlessly—"I don't want to hurt Mary. I don't want to hurt Mary," she said again, out of a long silence, "but after all I have a right to save Mills' soul for him, haven't I, Aunt Cilla?"

"Saving souls had better be left to those who make a business of it."

"I mean his poetic soul." Dulcie studied the toes of her rosy slippers. "A man can't live by bread alone."

Yet Mills had thrived rather well on the bread that Mary had given him, and there was this to say for Mills, he was very fond of his wife. She was not the love of his life, but she had been a helpmate for many years. He felt that he owed many things to her affection and strength. Like Dulcie, he shrank from making her unhappy.

It was because of Mary, therefore, that the lovers dallied. Otherwise, they said to each other, Mills would cast off his shackles, ask for his freedom, and then he and Dulcie would fly to Paris, where nobody probed into pasts and where they could make their dreams come true.

They found many ways in which to see each other. Dulcie had a little town car, and she picked Mills up at all hours and took him on long and lovely 155