"Come in, Morris," she said at once.
He entered and, closing the door, remained near it an instant, looking at her. Then he came slowly forward.
She had been writing. She put aside her portfolio as he came in. Her figure in its white muslin gown lay sunk in the green hollow of her chair, very listless. All the feverish light of the past evening had faded from her face. Her eyes looked soft, grey and tired in their deep shadows. They rested on his face with a sad depth of maternity that he could not at all fathom. He was uneasy under this look, yet it had no reproach in it. It was the look most terrible to Love. Hatred does not wither him like that look. It comes from the heart that, comprehending all, has forgiven all. To forgive all, one must detach oneself, become impersonal. Sophy was now regarding Loring from this standpoint of absolute detachment. Even the maternity in her look and feeling was impersonal—the abstract sense of motherhood with which Eve, leaning from the ramparts of her regained Paradise, might regard mankind. Loring was not a man to Sophy that morning—he was mankind—a symbol. She, the woman, symbolised the Mother.
It was this in her look that made Loring ill at ease, vaguely apprehensive. But it was a look, to his mind, so out of keeping with what he had feared might be the reason of her sending for him, that he decided with intense relief that his conjecture must have been a mistaken one.
"Hope you're not feeling very seedy," he said constrainedly. "You look a bit done, you know."
"Yes— I'm tired. Won't you sit in that other chair? It's more comfortable."
He shifted to the other chair, feeling more and more ill at ease. As she did not speak at once, he said nervously:
"You sent for me, didn't you?"
"Yes," she said. "I was only thinking how to begin."
Then she looked into his eyes with a clear, direct look.