Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/246

 not the worst of it. He found that they had not a taste in common. She laughed at his books, at his love of sea and sky. She even laughed at his Mary Pick, whose name suggested a hated rival.

And so he left her—laughing.

A certain sense of responsibility, however, took him to her once a month, and a letter went to her every week. She was his wife. He continued in a sense to watch over her. Yet she resented his watching.

From her stairway she had seen him, and when a rest was granted she came down to him.

"I'll be through presently," she said. "We can go to my hotel."

Her rooms in the hotel overlooked the sea. There was a balcony, and they sat on it in long lazy chairs and had iced things to drink.

O-liver drank lemonade. His wife had something stronger.

"I have not been well," she said; "it's a part of the doctor's prescription."

She had removed the pink from her face, and he saw that she was pale.

"You are working too hard," he told her. "You'd better take a month in the desert, out of doors."

She shivered. She hated the out-of-doors that he raved about. They had spent their honeymoon 240