Page:The little blue devil (IA littlebluedevil00mackiala).pdf/337

you think you’ll ever be sorry you married so young? I heard that fat American woman at the next table to ours at the hotel yesterday call us ‘a couple of babies,’ as we went out. Do you think you’ll ever regret it?"

"What a silly baby-child! Doesn’t it give us all the longer time together?"

"Yes; that’s the way I thought about it . . . and it’s all going to be as beautiful as this in different ways."

"In different ways!" Something in Tony’s brain sounded in response to that, and went on echoing through Pamela’s next words, so that he hardly heard them. It clanged: "I hope so—I hope so. . . ."

"—and you said we’d reach your pink-and-purple château d’Espagne to-morrow, dear———"

(". . . I hope so!" He scarcely grasped the meaning of it. "In different ways. . . . It’s because this is so—easy, so smooth—I can’t go on with it always. I must work. That’s it. I miss the work—I want it badly . . . already.")

"Tony, you don’t seem as if you were looking forward to it!"

He raised his eyes to her face, seen soft and dim in the twilight. He still felt as if a bell were tolling in his brain.

("Work—work—this is too silky—I can’t go on like this all my life—and God! I’m young too—I’ve worked too long, and I can’t live without it. . . . I want to work for my very bread. . . .")

"Tony!"

It was a small cry, half laughing, half reproachful. With one quick movement he held her in his arms.

"Oh, Tony! What will José think?"

"Who cares? He doesn’t, certainly. Pamela, Pamela, I do love you!"

Pamela, kissed breathless, hid her face on his shoulder to gain time. From that position of vantage she said mis-