Ive Married Marjorie | Page 6

wife, darling."
"I hope you'll make me useful," she answered in a small voice.
Fortunately she saw the ridiculousness of what she had said herself
before the constrained note of her voice reached her husband, and
began, a little nervously, to laugh at herself. So that passed off all right.

"Will life be just one succession of hoping things pass off all right?"
she wondered. And she did wish Francis wasn't so scornful about all
the things Logan said. For Logan, in spite of his mysterious disability,
was very brilliant; he wrote essays for real magazines that you had to
pay thirty-five cents for, and when Marjorie said she knew him people
were always very respectful and impressed. Marjorie had been brought
up to respect such things very much, herself, in a pretty Westchester
suburb, where celebrities were things which passed through in clouds
of glory, lecturing for quite as much as the club felt it could afford. A
celebrity who let you talk to him, nay, seemed delighted when you let
him talk to you, couldn't be as negligible as Francis seemed to think
him. . . . Francis didn't seem as if he had ever read anything. . . . It was
a harmless question to ask, at least.
"What did you read, over there?" she asked him.
"We read anything we could get hold of that would take our minds,"
was the answer, rather grimly. Then, more lightly, "When I wasn't
reading detective stories I was studying books on forestry. Did you
know you had married a forester bold, Marge?"
"Of course I remembered you said that was what you did," she
answered, relieved that the talk was veering away, for one moment,
from themselves.
"Poor little girl, you haven't had a chance to know very much about
me," he said tenderly. "Well, I know a lot more about it than I did when
I went away. Oh, the trees in France, dear! It's worse to think of the
trees than of the people, I think sometimes. I suppose that's because
they always meant a lot to me--very much as a jeweler would feel badly
about all the spoons the Crown Prince took home with him. . . .
Anyway, they wanted me to stay over there and do reforestation. Big
chances. But I didn't feel as if I could stay away from little old New
York--naturally Marge had nothing to do with it--another hour. Would
you have liked to go to Italy and watch me re-forest, Marjorie?"
Marjorie's "Oh, no!" was very fervent. She also found herself thinking
stealthily that even any one as efficient as Francis could not reforest the

city of New York, and that therefore any position he had would very
likely let her off. Maybe he might go very soon.
With this thought in her mind she led the way up the three flights of
stairs to the tiny apartment she and Lucille Strong shared. If Francis
had not spoken as they reached the door she might have carried it
through. But just as she fitted her key in the door he did speak, behind
her, an arm about her.
"In another minute you and I will be alone together; in our own
home--my wife----"
He took the key gently from her hand; he unlocked the door, and drew
her in, with his arms around her. He pushed the door to behind them,
and bent down to kiss her again, very tenderly and reverently. And in
that instant Marjorie's self-control broke.
CHAPTER II
"Oh, please don't touch me, just for a minute!" she exclaimed.
"Please--please--just stop a minute!"
She did not realize that her tone was very much that of a patient
addressing a dentist. Francis's arms dropped, and he looked at her, all
the light going out of his face, and showing its weary lines. He closed
the door entirely, carefully. He went mechanically over to a chair and
sat down on it, always with that queer carefulness; he laid his cap
beside him, and looked at Marjorie, crouched against the door.
"Please come over here and sit down," he said very courteously, but
with the boyishness gone from his voice even more completely than
Marjorie had wished.
She came very meekly and sat opposite him, with a little queer cold
feeling around her heart.
"Please look at me," he asked gently. She lifted her blue eyes miserably
to his, and tried to smile. But unconsciously she shrank a little as she

did so, and he saw it.
"I won't touch you--not until you want me to," he began. "What's the
matter, Marjorie? Is it nerves, or are you afraid of me, or----"
"It--it was just your coming so suddenly," she lied miserably. "It upset
me. That was all."
In her mind there was