And again he promised. “I’ll make them see everything I can.”
He turned to her at last. She sat, her face still downcast in its shadow, while the light glittered on her wreaths of hair. Her hands still lay before her on the table, and the light fell on her wedding-ring. Perhaps she was looking at the ring.
“It all depends on something else,” he heard himself say suddenly.
She turned her head and looked round at him. His attitude, his distance from her, drew her attention rather than his words, for she repeated mildly: “On something else?”
“Whether I can keep those promises, you know,” said Oldmeadow. “Yes, it all depends on something else. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
He hardly knew what he was saying as he approached the table and pushed the brocaded chair, companion to the one in which she sat, a little from its place. He leaned on its back and looked down at her hands and Adrienne kept her eyes on him, attentive rather than perplexed.
“May I talk to you about it now?” he asked. “It’s something quite different.”
“Oh, do,” said Adrienne. She drew her hands into her lap and sat upright, in readiness. And, suddenly, as he was silent, she added: “About yourself? I’ve been forgetting that, haven’t I? I’ve only been thinking of my side. You have quite other plans, perhaps. Perhaps you’re not going back to England for ever so long. Is it an appointment?”
“No; not an appointment,” he muttered, still looking down, at the table now, since her hands were no longer there. “But perhaps I shan’t be going back for a long time. I hope not.”
“Oh,” she murmured. And now he had perplexed her. After what he had just promised her, his hope must perplex and even trouble her. “Do tell me,” she said.