Without any more ado he went up to her and drew her into his arms. "My little darling," he told her, "listen to me! Try now to put all this perplexing thing right out of your mind. Lift up your poor worried head—yes—like that—and look at me. How can you look at me when you're crying? Yes, that's better! I'm not as handsome as I was, little woman, nor as young, but I love you more then ever. I want you to forget everything else now, and just to remember that I love you. Is that all right, little silly thing? Have you remembered it yet?"
In the warm circle of his arms, too tired to resist him, Mary smiled.
"Then say after me, 'James, I love you!'" She said it, and then, defeated, let her head sink on his shoulder.
James bent over her. This unexpected uprising of hers, her daring, her provocation, seemed to have coloured and intensified his impression of her. He saw her more clearly, he thought, than he had ever seen her before—funny brave little thing. He tightened the clasp of his arms. "Twenty years ago," he said, "I would have picked you up and carried you off without mercy—but now—" He paused. A sudden regret rose in him for the brutal strength, the boldness, the imperious desires of youth. "Well," he went on, "now I'm an old man, and Mr. Trent might meet us on the stairs, so you must run along by yourself, little sweetheart." He pushed her away from him gently, and held her for a moment at arm's length.
Mary collected herself as best she could to face his glance, but when he saw her he was shocked into solicitude. "My dear, you're white—I can feel you trembling—this has been too much for you, you'd better go to bed at once!" He led her to the door. "Shall I come up with you?—No?—then kiss me first—just affectionately—and show me brighter cheeks in the morning."
He shut the door behind her with a sigh.
Mary went slowly upstairs to her room and there sat down. She did not even remember that James had told her to go to bed. She was tired and shaken, but she knew that she must do her best to think.
It would have been easy not to think but merely to feel, to be unhappy without understanding why, and to find comfort in tears. This quiet resignation, this acceptance of failure, would have been for her a natural and a familiar notion. Only by a violent contraction of her consciousness could she turn from it.
Even then long minutes passed by before the desire for mental life, for action, came back to her. She sat in a heavy stupor, unable to check or to consider the images that formed themselves in her mind. To one idea, she told herself, she was holding fast—the idea of some hard, yet undiscovered duty that lay before her. "I must," she said presently, "I must." The spoken words recalled her to a sense of the present.
She moved to put some more coal on to her sinking fire. Then, with an effort, she made herself face the question of facts. What had happened? Where was she? What had she got to do?