XI THE WHEEL TURNS ON (continued 2)

Here they were, on the steps, holding hands—just as in the old days, only of course now it was all more wonderful. Strange, they thought—so strange: somehow as though the tiny seed of return had been present even in that dark and groping lovers’ quarrel up Market street....

She snuggled against him softly. Thoughts of the new life just setting in flooded her heart with solemn happiness. She watched the dim trees stirring in the night wind. Stella was quite as far from Irmengarde as before. Alas, she would never be like Irmengarde, after all. But she didn’t care. And when it came to life and the serious facts of living—good heavens! she had had experiences that would make Irmengarde faint right away and never come to again.

She leaned against Jerome’s shoulder in a happy, tired way. Life had snatched them up and set them down again. Yes, life had played pranks with them both, as life will sometimes—incredibly or not, it makes no difference; tragically or absurdly, there remains nothing to be said. And Jerome grasped his happiness, too.

“Somehow,” she said, her voice all warmth and tenderness, with a touch of humour also, at last, “I wish you weren’t going away, but were going to get back your old job at Oaks-Ferguson’s!” And for the first time, almost, since that night the little dinner wasn’t eaten—Stella smiled. “But I know,” she went on humorously, “you’d never be happy there again, and—well, as soon as you can come back to marry me, I’ll be ready to go away with you.”

“Back to Tripoli?” he murmured, his eyes full of love, but touched also with ambitious, worldly dreams.

“Wherever the work takes you,” she said.

Then there came a subtle twinkle in his eye, and, though with great tenderness, he couldn’t resist reminding her: “You used to talk so much about visiting Paris. Some day—well, some day, you know, it might be even that—you never can tell, Stella. Wouldn’t it be funny,” he laughed, “to think of us living in Paris!”

They kissed, like children, without embracing.

And just as he went away, he pressed a ring into her hand. “I know you don’t want to wear it now,” he said, “but just keep it where you can look at it sometimes. It will help you to remember. And later on,” he added, “we’ll trade it in at Ascher’s for a bigger stone. But the man told me that it’s a good little diamond, at that, for its size.”