Adrienne was very much altered. The magic of the lime-tree scene no longer lay about her. Her skin was sallow, her eyes sunken, her projecting mouth was at once stubborn, weary and relaxed. She had been almost beautiful on that July day and to-day she was definitely ugly. Oldmeadow saw that some intent inner preoccupation held her thoughts.
“I am surprised at her; very much surprised,” said Palgrave, “though I might have warned you that Meg wasn’t a person worth risking a great deal for. Oh, yes, she’s nearly beside herself all right. She’s lost the man she cared for and she can’t, now, ever be made ‘respectable.’ Oh, I see further into Meg’s grief than you do, my poor Adrienne. She’s just as conventional and unheroic at heart as Mother; and that’s what she minds—more than anything.”
Oldmeadow, sunken in the deep chair Palgrave had drawn for him to the table, watched the curious interchange, and after a pause, in her jaded voice, Adrienne from the window-seat commented: “I understand her rage and misery. It’s because her grief is divided and spoiled and tainted like that that she is distracted.”
“Will you pour out tea?” Palgrave asked her gloomily. “You’ll see anyone’s side, always, except your own.”
To this Adrienne, rising and coming forward to the table, made no reply. She wore a dark dress that recalled to Oldmeadow the one in which he had first seen her; the short jacket tying across white in front and white ruffles falling about her neck and hands. A small, dark hat was bent down about her face.
Strange, brooding face. What was she thinking of, Oldmeadow wondered, as he watched her hands, impeded by the falling ruffles, moving with the old, fumbling gestures among the tea-things; she had constantly to throw back the ruffles, and the tea-pot, after all, was too heavy for her. It slipped on one side as she lifted it and the hot tea poured over her hand. She kept her hold bravely and Oldmeadow rescued her.
“How stupid I am!” she said, biting her lip.
“You’ve scalded your hand,” said Palgrave, eyeing her with his air no longer of rapturous but of gloomy devotion.
They made Oldmeadow think of comrade political prisoners moving off together in a convoy to Siberia. There was something as bleak, as heavy, as uninspired in their aspect. He could not think that Palgrave could now catch much light or flame from such a companion. They would trudge through the snow; condemned, but together; to be together was the best thing, now, that life offered them.
She said that the scald was nothing and asked to be trusted to go on with the tea, grasping the handle with resolution. Oldmeadow, however, standing beside her, insisted on filling the cups for her.