VII
ND the picture persisted after he had parted from Peter Waring at his corner and walked on uptown alone in the spring twilight. The hearth, he reflected, wouldn't be a grandiose affair. In fact, it would be something like the hearth in his Adirondack bungalow, a comfortable, homey affair of rough bricks, with an inglenook. And the cat would be an old-fashioned tabby cat such as one reads of in old-fashioned stories. And the wife—well, she wouldn't be actually on the hearth, but she'd be in front of it, with the firelight playing on her brown hair and in her eyes, which would be darkly blue. And when he came up she would put a hand over her shoulder without turning and draw him down to her. And
Gordon muttered an apology to the pedestrian he had jostled and came to with a start. He had seen the face of the woman on the hearth and lo, she was Peggy-in-the-Rain!