But when she spoke her words were like sharp air cutting into drowned lungs.
“I saw you pass this afternoon, Gavan.”
From the farthest window, where he had paused, he turned to her.
“Did you, Eppie?”
“Didn’t you see that I did?”
“I wasn’t sure.” He heard the flavor of helplessness in his own voice and felt in her a hard hostility, pleased to play with his helplessness.
“Why did you not speak of what you saw?” Her anger against him was almost like a palpable presence between them in the dark, glowing room. He began to feel that through some ugly blunder he was very much at her mercy, and that, for the first time, he should find little mercy in her; and, for the first time, too, a quick hostility rose in him to answer hers. It was as if he had tasted too deeply of release; all his strength was with him to fight off the threat of the returning grasp.
“Why should I?” he asked, letting her see in his gaze at her that just such a hard placidity would meet any interpretation she chose to give.
“Didn’t you care to understand?”
“I thought that I did understand.”