"Oh, Newland, how funny! Isn't
that FRENCH?"
On the whole, he was glad to have the matter settled
for him by her refusing to take seriously his wish to
invite M. Riviere. Another after-dinner talk would have
made it difficult to avoid the question of New York;
and the more Archer considered it the less he was able
to fit M. Riviere into any conceivable picture of New
York as he knew it.
He perceived with a flash of chilling insight that in
future many problems would be thus negatively solved
for him; but as he paid the hansom and followed his
wife's long train into the house he took refuge in the
comforting platitude that the first six months were
always the most difficult in marriage. "After that I
suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing
off each other's angles," he reflected; but the worst of
it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the
very angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep.
XXI.
The small bright lawn stretched away smoothly to
the big bright sea.
The turf was hemmed with an edge of scarlet geranium
and coleus, and cast-iron vases painted in chocolate
colour, standing at intervals along the winding
path that led to the sea, looped their garlands of
petunia and ivy geranium above the neatly raked gravel.
Half way between the edge of the cliff and the square
wooden house (which was also chocolate-coloured, but
with the tin roof of the verandah striped in yellow and
brown to represent an awning) two large targets had
been placed against a background of shrubbery.
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