"
"But aren't you afraid that some one will steal me?" she asked, laughingly.
"Not I." He was smiling proudly at her. "If you could be stolen, if you
could be happier anywhere than with me, you have only to let me into the
plot."
"There are some women who would not like that."
"And there are men who wouldn't feel as I do. But you and I, we belong to a
class all by ourselves, don't we?"
Apparently they were as devoted each to the other as ever. But each now
sought a separate happiness--he perforce in his work, she perforce in the
only way left open to her. When they were together, which meant several
hours every day and usually one whole day in the week, they were at once
seemingly absorbed each in the other with all the rest as background. But
none the less, they were leading separate lives, with separate interests,
separate tastes, separate modes of thinking. The "bourgeois" life which
they had planned--both standing behind the counter and both adding up the
results of the day's business after they had put up the shutters, two as
one in all the interests of life--became a dead and forgotten dream.
XXII.
THE SHENSTONE EPISODE.
On the way to or from the opera or a party, she would peep in on him,
watching the back of his head as he bent over his desk or read away at some
dull-looking book, wishing that he would feel her presence and turn with
that smile which was always hers from him, yet fearing to make a sound and
compel his attention.
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