“When are you going to eat out of my hand, Willie?” she asked.

“Haven’t I been doing it for the past week?”

“Oh, they always do that before they’re married—­so Mrs. Marigold informed me.  I mean afterwards.”

“Don’t you think, my dear,” I interposed, “it depends on what your hands hold out for him to eat?”

Her eyes wavered a bit under mine.

“If he’s good,” she answered, “they’ll be always full of nice things.”

She sat, flushed, happy, triumphant, her arms straight down, her knuckles resting on the leathern seat, her silver-brocaded, slender feet, clear of the floor, peeping close together beneath her white frock.

“And if he isn’t good?”

“They’ll be full of nasty medicine.”

She laughed and pivoted round and, after running over the keys of the piano for a second or two, began to play Gounod’s “Death March of a Marionette.”  She played it remarkably well.  When she had ended, Connor walked from the hearth, where he had been standing, to her side.  I noticed a little puzzled look in his eyes.

“Delightful,” said he.  “But, Betty, what put that thing suddenly into your head?”

“We had been talking nonsense,” she replied, picking out a chord or two, without looking al him.  “And I thought we ought to give all past vanities and frivolities and lunacies a decent burial.”

He put both hands very tenderly on her shoulders.

“Requiescat,” said he.

She spread out her fingers and struck the two resonant chords of an “Amen,” and then glanced up at him, laughing.

After a while, Marigold announced her car, or, rather, her aunt’s car.  They took their leave.  I gave them my benediction.  Presently, Betty, fur-coated, came running in alone.  She flung herself down, in her impetuous way, beside my wheel-chair.  No visit of Betty’s would have been complete without this performance.

“I haven’t had a word with you all the evening, Majy, dear.  I’ve told Willie to discuss strategy with Sergeant Marigold in the hall, till I come.  Well—­you thought I was a damn little fool the other day, didn’t you?  What do you think now?”

“I think, my dear,” said I, with a hand on her forehead, “that you are marrying a very gallant English gentleman of whose love any woman in the land might be proud.”

She clutched me round the neck and brought her young face near mine—­and looked at me—­I hesitate to say it,—­but so it seemed,—­ somewhat haggardly.

“I love to hear you say that, it means so much to me.  Don’t think I haven’t a sense of proportion.  I have.  In all this universal slaughter and massacre, a woman’s life counts as much as that of a mosquito.”  She freed an arm and snapped her fingers.  “But to the woman herself, her own life can’t help being of some value.  Such as it is, I want to give it all, every bit of it, to Willie.  He shall have everything, everything, everything that I can give him.”