Part 38

Before Mary and Mills were married Dulcie's mother died, and Dulcie went abroad to live with an aunt. Five years later she married an American living in Paris. He was much older than she, and it was rumored that she was not happy. Ten years after her marriage she returned to Washington a widow.

It was at once apparent that she had changed. She wore charming but sophisticated clothes, made on youthful lines so that she seemed nearer twenty-five than thirty-five. Her hair was still soft and shining. She had been a pretty girl, she was a beautiful woman. But the greatest change was in her attitude toward life. In Paris her golden-rule philosophy had been turned topsy-turvy.

Hence when she met Mills and found the old flames lighted in his eyes, she stirred the ashes of her dead romance and discovered a spark. It was pleasant after that to talk with him in dim corners at people's houses. Now and then she invited him and Mary to her own big house with plenty of other guests, so that she was not missed if she walked with Mills in the garden. She meant no harm and she was really fond of Mary.

The years had not been so kind to Mills as to Dulcie. They had stolen some of his slenderness, and his hair was thin at the back. But he wrote better books, and it was Mary who had helped him write them. She had made of his house a home. She was still the same sturdy soul. Her bright color had faded and her hair was gray. Life with Mills had not been an easy road to travel. She had traveled it with loss of youth, perhaps, but with no loss of self-respect. She knew that her husband was in some measure what he was because of her. She had kept the children away from his study door; she had seen that he was nourished and sustained. She had prodded him at times to increased activities. He had resented the prodding, but it had resulted in a continuity of effort which had added to his income.

Dulcie came into Mary's life as something very fresh and stimulating. She spoke of it to Mills.

"It is almost as if I had been abroad to hear her talk. She has had such interesting experiences."

It was not Dulcie's experiences which interested Mills; it was the loveliness of her profile, the glint of her hair, the youth in her, the renewed urge of youth in himself.

Priscilla Dodd saw what had happened. Priscilla was the aunt with whom Dulcie had lived in Paris; and she was a wise, if worldly, old woman. She saw rocks ahead for Dulcie.

"He's in love with you, my dear."

Dulcie, in a rose satin house coat which shone richly in the flame of Aunt Priscilla's open fire, was not disconcerted.

"I know. Mary doesn't satisfy him, Aunt Cilla."

"And you do?"

"Yes."

"The less you see of him the better."

"I'm not sure of that."

"Why not?"

"I can inspire him, be the torch to illumine his path."

"So that's the way you are putting it to yourself! But how will Mary like that?"

"Oh, Mary"--Dulcie moved restlessly--"I don't want to hurt Mary. I don't want to hurt Mary," she said again, out of a long silence, "but after all I have a right to save Mills' soul for him, haven't I, Aunt Cilla?"

"Saving souls had better be left to those who make a business of it."

"I mean his poetic soul." Dulcie studied the toes of her rosy slippers. "A man can't live by bread alone."

Yet Mills had thrived rather well on the bread that Mary had given him, and there was this to say for Mills, he was very fond of his wife. She was not the love of his life, but she had been a helpmate for many years. He felt that he owed many things to her affection and strength. Like Dulcie, he shrank from making her unhappy.

It was because of Mary, therefore, that the lovers dallied. Otherwise, they said to each other, Mills would cast off his shackles, ask for his freedom, and then he and Dulcie would fly to Paris, where nobody probed into pasts and where they could make their dreams come true.

They found many ways in which to see each other. Dulcie had a little town car, and she picked Mills up at all hours and took him on long and lovely rides, from which he returned ecstatic, with wild flowers in his coat and a knowledge of work left undone.

Gossip began to fly about. Aunt Priscilla warned Dulcie.

"It is a dangerous thing to do, my dear. People will talk."

"What do Mills and I care for people? Oh, if it were not for Mary--" She had just come in from a ride with Mills, and her eyes were shining.

"I wish we were not dining there to-night," said Aunt Priscilla. "I wonder how Mary manages a dinner of eight with only one servant."