s punctual as an eager, idle creature like herself.

She had made up her mind so clearly that when she entered the night-blue
room there would be nothing but tombs and mummies that when she saw Pete
standing with his overcoat over his arm, in the blue-serge clothes she
particularly liked, she felt as much surprised as if their meeting were
accidental.

She tried to draw a long breath.

"I shall never get used to it," she said. "If we had been married a
thousand years, I should always feel just like this when I see you."

"Oh, no, you won't," he answered. "I hope the very next time we meet you
will say, quite in a wife's orthodox tone: 'My dear, I've been waiting
twenty minutes. Not that I mind at all; only I was afraid I must have
misunderstood you.'"

"You hope? Oh, I hope we shall never be like that."

"Really? Why, I enjoy the idea. I shall enjoy saying to total strangers,
'Ah, gentlemen, if my wife were ever on time--' It makes me feel so
indissolubly united to you."

"I like it best as we are now."

"We might try different methods alternate years: one year we could be
domestic, and the next, detached, and so on."

By this time they had discovered that they were leaning on a mummy-case,
and Mathilde drew back with an exclamation. "Poor thing!" she said. "I
suppose she once had a lover, too."

"And very likely met him in the room of Chinese antiquities in the Temple
Museum," said Pete, and then, changing his tone, he added: "But come
along. I want to show you a few little things which I have selected to
furnish our home. I think you'll like them."

Pete was always inventing games like this, and calling on her to enter in
without the slightest warning. One of them was about a fancy ball he was
giving in the main hall of the Pennsylvania Station. But this new idea,
to treat the whole museum as a sort of super-department store, made her
laugh in a faint, dependent way that she knew Pete liked. She believed
that such forms of play were peculiar to themselves, so she guarded them
as the deepest kind of secret; for she thought, if her mother ever found
out about them, she would at once conclude that the whole relation was
childish. To all other lovers Mathilde attributed a uniform seriousness.

It took them a long time to choose their house-furnishings: there was a
piece of black-and-gold lacquer; a set of painted panels; a Persian rug,
swept by the tails of two haughty peacocks; some cloud-gray Chinese
porce