Get me
anything in a hurry. You need not wait now; go get the dinner up as
soon as possible."
The effect which the photograph of Miss Delamar had upon him, and the
transformation it had accomplished in his room, had been as great as
would have marked the presence there of the girl herself. While
considering this it had come to Stuart, like a flash of inspiration,
that here was a way by which he could test the responsibilities and
conditions of married life without compromising either himself or the
girl to whom he would suppose himself to be married.
"I will put that picture at the head of the table," he said, "and I
will play that it is she herself, her own beautiful, lovely self, and
I will talk to her and exchange views with her, and make her answer me
just as she would were we actually married and settled." He looked at
his watch and found it was just seven o'clock. "I will begin now," he
said, "and I will keep up the delusion until midnight. To-night is the
best time to try the experiment, because the picture is new now, and
its influence will be all the more real. In a few weeks it may have
lost some of its freshness and reality and will have become one of the
fixtures in the room."
Stuart decided that under these new conditions it would be more
pleasant to dine at Delmonico's, and he was on the point of asking the
Picture what she thought of it, when he remembered that while it had
been possible for him to make a practise of dining at that place as a
bachelor, he could not now afford so expensive a luxury, and he
decided that he had better economize in that particular and go instead
to one of the _table d'hote_ restaurants in the neighborhood.
Pages:
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193