VII
It was in the Villa Margherita, by the palms of the
Charleston Battery and the metallic harbor, that her aloofness
melted.
When they sat on the upper balcony, enchanted by the
moon glitter, she cried, "Shall I go back to Gopher Prairie
with you? Decide for me. I'm tired of deciding and undeciding."
"No. You've got to do your own deciding. As a matter of
fact, in spite of this honeymoon, I don't think I want you to
come home. Not yet."
She could only stare.
"I want you to be satisfied when you get there. I'll do
everything I can to keep you happy, but I'll make lots of
breaks, so I want you to take time and think it over."
She was relieved. She still had a chance to seize splendid
indefinite freedoms. She might go—oh, she'd see Europe, somehow,
before she was recaptured. But she also had a firmer
respect for Kennicott. She had fancied that her life might
make a story. She knew that there was nothing heroic or
obviously dramatic in it, no magic of rare hours, nor valiant
challenge, but it seemed to her that she was of some
significance because she was commonplaceness, the ordinary life
of the age, made articulate and protesting. It had not occurred
to her that there was also a story of Will Kennicott, into which
she entered only so much as he entered into hers; that he
had bewilderments and concealments as intricate as her own,
and soft treacherous desires for sympathy.
Thus she brooded, looking at the amazing sea, holding his
hand.
