As they went down the steps she took his arm. "Tom, darling, I'm proud of you. Now they know where we stand, both of us."
"It was splendid of you, Hildred, to play up like that. It backs me tremendously that you're not afraid to own me. But, you know, what I've just said will put us farther apart."
"Oh, I don't know about that. Father said we couldn't be engaged unless you were acknowledged as Mr. Whitelaw's son; and you have been. He never said anything about your being Mrs. Whitelaw's son. This is a case in which it's the father that counts specially."
"But I couldn't take any of his money beyond what I earned."
"Oh, but that wouldn't make any difference."
They crossed the Avenue and entered the Park. They entered the Park because it was the obvious place in which to look for a little privacy. All the gay sweet life of the May afternoon was at its brightest. Riders were cantering up and down the bridle-path; friends were strolling; children were playing; birds were flying with bits of string or straw for the building of their nests. To Tom and Hildred the gladness was thrown out by the deeper gladness in themselves.
"But you don't know how poor we'll be."
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"Oh, don't I? Where do you think I keep my eyes? Why, I expect to be poor when I marry—for a while at any rate. I expect to do my own housework, like most of the young married women I know."
"Oh, but you've always talked so much about servants."
"Yes, dear Tom, but that was to be on a desert island where we were to be all alone. We shan't find that island except in our hearts."
"But even without the island, I always supposed that when a girl like you got married she...."
"She began with an establishment on the scale of ours in Louisburg Square, at the least. Yes, that used to be the way, twenty or thirty years ago. But I'm sorry to say it isn't so any longer. Talk about revolution! We've got revolution as it is. With rents and wages as they are, and all the other expenses, why, a young couple must begin with the simple life, or stay single. I'd rather begin with the simple life, and I know more about it than you think."
He laughed. "So I see."
"Oh, I can cook and sew and make beds and wash dishes...."
They sauntered on, without noticing where they were going, till they came to a dell, where in the shade of an elm there was a seat, and another near a heart-shaped clump of lilacs, all in bloom. They sat in the shade of the elm. They were practical young lovers, and yet they were young lovers. They were lovers for whom there had never been any lovers but themselves. The wonderful thing was that each felt what the other felt; the discoveries by which they had come
[Pg 482]
 to the knowledge of this fact were the first that had ever been made.
"Oh, Tom, do you feel like that? Why, that's just the way I feel."
"Is it, Hildred? Well, it shows we were made for each other, doesn't it, because I never thought that anyone felt like that but me?"
"Well, no one ever did but me. Only Tom, dear, tell me when it was that you first began to fall in love with me."
"It was the night—a winter's night—five, six, seven years ago—when I found Guy in a mix-up with a lot of hoodlums in the snow."
"And you brought him home. That was the first time you ever saw me."
"Yes, it was the first time I ever saw you that I began...."
"And I began then, too. Since that evening, there's never been anybody else. Oh, Tom, was there ever anybody else with you?"
Tom thought of Maisie. "Not—not really."
"Well, unreally then?"
As he made his confession she listened eagerly. "Yes, that was unreally. And you never heard anything more about her?"
"Oh, yes. When I was in Boston a few weeks ago I went to see her aunt. She told me that Maisie had been married for the last two years to a traveling salesman she'd been in love with for a long time, and that she had a baby."
The thought of Maisie brought back the thought of
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 Honey; and the thought of Honey woke him to the fact that he had been on this spot before.
"Why—why, Hildred! This is the very bench on ............