It was not strange--not unbelievable. It was sane and true. He
was still a king.
He reached down and laid a tender, a fraternal hand upon the brow. The
contact strengthened him, as always. He could believe anything wise and
good of himself. He could be a true mate to that bewildering flapper,
full of understanding kindness. He saw little intimate moments of their
life together, her perplexities over fumed oak and patent tubs and
marketing for pure food; always her terrific earnestness. Now and then
he would laugh at that, but then she would laugh too; sometimes the
flapper seemed to show, with an engaging little sense of shame, that she
just perfectly knew how funny she was.
But she was staunch; she had perfectly well known the very first moment
she saw him. And she had never spoiled it all, like that other one in
Chicago, by asking him if he was fond of Nature and Good Music and such
things. The flapper was capable but quiet. With his hand still upon
Ram-tah's brow in that half-timid, strange caress, he was flooded with a
sudden new gladness about the flapper. She was _dear_, if you came right
down to it. And Ram-tah had brought her to him. He erected himself to
look down once more. They _knew_, those two selves; understood each
other and life.
It occurred to him for the first time that Ram-tah, too, must have liked
dogs, must have been inexpressibly moved by the chained souls that were
always trying to speak from their brown eyes.
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