Suddenly, as he looked at her, seeing the great fatigue, seeing the pallor, seeing the smile only stay as if with determination, the truth of Miss Allen’s description was revealed to him. She was frightfully changed. Her smile, her courage, made him think of a danse macabre. The rhythm, the gaiety of life were there, but life itself was gone.
The revelation came to him, but he felt himself clutch it silently, and he let her go on talking.
She went on, indeed, very volubly, talking of her breakdown, of how good the general and her aunt had been to her, and of how getting back to her work had picked her up directly.
“I think I’ll finally pitch my tent here,” she went on. “The interest grows all the time,—and the ties, the responsibility. One can’t do things by half measures; you know that, thorough person that you are. I mustn’t waste my mite of income by gadding about. I’m going to chuck all the rest and give myself altogether to this.”
“You used to think that the rest helped you in this,” said Grainger.
“To a certain extent it did, and will, for I’ve had so much that it will last me for a long time.”
“You intend to live permanently down here?”
“I shall have my holidays, and I shall run up to civilization for a dinner or two now and then. It’s not that I’ve any illusions about my usefulness or importance. It’s that all this is so useful to me. It’s something I can do with all my might and main, and I’ve such masses of energy you know, Jim, that need employment. And then, though of course one works at the wrong side of the tapestry and has to trust that the pattern is coming right, I do believe that, to a certain extent, it does need me.”
He leaned back in his chair opposite her, listening to the voice that rattled on so cheerfully. With his head bent, he kept that old gaze upon her and clutched the clearer and clearer revelation: Eppie—Eppie in torment; Eppie shattered;—Eppie—why, it was as if she sat there before him smiling and rattling over a huge hole in her chest. And, finally, the consciousness of the falsity in her own tone made her falter a little. She couldn’t continue so glibly while his eyes were saying to her: “Yes; I see, I see. You are wounded to death.” But if she faltered it was only, in the pause, to look about for another shield.
“And you?” she said. “Have you done a great deal of climbing? Tell me about yourself, dear Jim.”