“Nothing,” said Calamy.
“Yes, you were. You must have been thinking about something.”
“Nothing in particular,” he repeated.
“Tell me,” Mary insisted. “I want to know.”
“Well, if you really want to know,” Calamy began slowly….
But she interrupted him. “And why did you hold up your hand like that? And spread out the fingers? I could see it, you know; against the window.” Pitch dark it was in the room, but beyond the unshuttered windows was a starlit night.
Calamy laughed—a rather embarrassed laugh. “Oh, you saw it, did you—the hand? Well, as a matter of fact, it was precisely about my hand that I was thinking.”
“About your hand?” said Mary incredulously. “That seems a queer thing to think about.”
“But interesting if you think about it hard enough.”
“Your hands,” she said softly, in another voice, “your hands. When they touch me….” With a feminine movement of gratitude, of thanks for a benefit received, she pressed herself more closely against him; in the darkness she kissed him. “I love you too much,” she whispered, “too much.” And at the moment it was almost true. The strong complete spirit, she had written in her note-book, must be able to love with fury, savagely, mindlessly. Not without pride, she had found herself complete and strong. Once, at a dinner party, she had been taken down by a large black and lemon coloured Argentine; unfolding his napkin, he had opened the evening’s conversation, in that fantastic trans-Pyrenean French which was his only substitute for the Castilian, by saying, with a roll of his black eyes and a flashing ivory smile: “Jé vois qué vous avez du temmperramenk.” “Oh, à revendre,” she had answered gaily, throwing herself into the light Parisian part. How marvellously amusing! But that was Life—Life all over. She had brought the incident into a short story, long ago. But the Argentine had looked with an expert’s eye; he was right. “I love you too much,” she whispered in the darkness. Yes, it was true, it was nearly true, at the moment, in the circumstances. She took his hand and kissed it. “That’s all I think about your hand,” she said.