“Gilbert! How you frightened me!” she cried. “I thought you were in your room; come along in to dinner.” She took his arm and they walked up the steps into the dining-room together. “Just a moment,” said her husband, turning to the door of the room. His hand was upon the handle, which turned easily in his grasp, and he ran upstairs to his own room. He opened the door. The light was on, the fire was burning brightly, a smell of cigarette smoke about, pen and paper upon his desk, the Japanese book-knife, the gilt matchbox, everything all right, no one there. He picked up a book from his desk . . . Monna Vanna. His bookplate was in it—Ex Libris—Gilbert Cannister. He put it down beside the green dish; two yellow oranges were in the green dish, and two most deliberately green Canadian apples rested by their side. He went to the door and swung it backwards and forwards quite easily. He sat on his desk trying to piece the thing together, glaring at the print and the book-knife and the smart matchbox, until his wife came up behind him exclaiming: “Come along, Gilbert!”
“Where are the kids, old man?” he asked her, and, before she replied, he had gone along to the nursery. He saw the two cots, his boy in one, his girl in the other. He turned whimsically to Mildred, saying: “There are only two, are there?” Such a question did not call for reply, but he confronted her as if expecting some assuring answer. She was staring at him with her bright beautiful eyes.
“Are there?” he repeated.
“How strange you should ask me that now!” she said. . . . “If you’re a very good man—perhaps . . .”
“Mildred!”
She nodded brightly.
He sat down in the rocking-chair, but got up again saying to her gently: “We’ll call him Gabriel.”
“But suppose—”
“No, no,” he said, stopping her lovely lips, “I know all about him.” And he told her a pleasant little tale.
Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (1921)
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