"I know. Mary doesn't satisfy him, Aunt Cilla."
"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."
"She is so splendid and competent, Aunt Cilla. Mills says so. Everybody says it. Things are easy for her that would be hard for other people."
Dulcie, drawing off her gloves, meditated.
"I fancy she likes me. I know I love her, but not so much as I love Mills."
Fifteen years ago Dulcie would have died rather than admit her love for a married man. But since then she had seen life through the eyes of a worldly-minded old husband, and it had made a difference.