Her head drooped, and there was a glitter of tears on her lashes; but in a moment she looked up, and her gaze rested full on his. "Vance, if you'll give me your promise not to come tomorrow I'll promise to go and see you next week in New York. I'll slip off somehow… . Because now, Vance," she cried, "whatever happens, I'll never marry anybody but you—never, never, not even if we have to wait for each other years and years."

Dizzy with joy, he stood looking at her as if he were looking into the sun; then he caught her to him, and their youth and passion flowed together like spring streams. "Laura Lou … Laura Lou … Only we won't wait any years and years," he cried; for at that moment it really seemed to him that achievement lay in his hand.

Chapter 4

Three years of marriage had not been needed to teach Halo Tarrant that when her husband came home to lunch it was generally because something had gone wrong. She had long known that if he sought her out at that hour it was not to be charmed but to be tranquillized, as a man with a raging headache seeks a pillow and a darkened room. This need had been less frequent with him since he had bought The Hour and started in on the exciting task of reorganizing it. Usually he preferred to lunch near the office, at one of the Bohemian places affected by Frenside and his group; probably it was not indifferent to him, as he made his way among the tables, to hear: "That's the fellow who's bought The Hour. Lewis Tarrant; tall fair chap; yes—writes himself… ." Every form of external recognition, even the most casual and unimportant, was needed to fortify his self-confidence. Halo remembered how she had laughed when Frenside, long before her marriage, had once said: "Young Tarrant? Clever boy—but can't rest unless the milkman knows it." Nowadays she would not have tolerated such a comment, even from Frenside; and if she made it inwardly she tempered it by reminding herself that an exaggerated craving for recognition often proceeds from a morbid modesty. Morbid—that was what poor Lewis was at bottom. She must never forget, when she was inclined to criticize him, that her faculty of rebounding, of drawing fresh energy from discouragement, had been left out of his finer organization—for her own support she had to call it finer.