My own emotions were queer. I did not feel actually excited. I felt just
as I used when we were going to take up a new position on the line where
great watchfulness would be necessary to succeed.

The maid Alathea had engaged arrived in the morning, and I had had the
loveliest flowers put in all the rooms. Pierre intended to outdo himself
for the wedding déjeuner, I knew, and Burton had been able to find
somewhere a really respectable looking footman, not too obviously
wounded.

Alathea handed me my crutch as we got out of the lift. Perhaps she
thinks this is going to be one of her new duties!

We went straight into the sitting-room and I sat down in my chair. Her
maid, named Henriette, had taken her cloak and hat in the hall, and I
suppose from sheer nervousness, and to cover the first awkward moments,
Alathea buried her face in the big bowl of roses on a table near another
arm chair, before she sat down in it.

"What lovely flowers!" she said. They were the first words she had
spoken to me directly.

"I wondered what would be your favorites. You must tell me for the
future. I just had roses because they happen to be mine."

"I like roses best too."

I was silent for quite two minutes. She tried to keep still, then I
spoke, and I could hear a tone of authority in my voice.