Her eyes had met his so steadily that he had imagined only contemplation or perhaps that maternal severity behind the steadiness. But the way in which they received these last tossed pebbles of metaphor showed him unrealized profundities. They deepened, they darkened, they widened on him. They seemed to engulf him in a sudden abyss of pain. And pain in her was indeed a color that could infect him.
“How horrible you are, Gavan,” she said, and her voice went with the words and with the look.
“Eppie!” he exclaimed on a tense, indrawn breath, as if over the sudden stab of a knife. “Have I hurt you?”
Her eyes turned from him. “Not what you say, or do. What you are.”
“You didn’t see, before, what I am?”
“Never—like this.”
He leaned toward her. “Dear Eppie, why do you make me talk? Let me be still. I only ask to be still.”
“You are worse still. Don’t you think I see what stillness means?”
She had pushed her low seat from him,—for he stretched his hands to her with his supplication,—and, rising to her feet, stepping back, she stood before the fire, somberly looking down at him.
Gavan, too, rose. Compunction, supplication, a twist of perplexity and suffering, made him careless of discretion. Face to face, laying his hands on her shoulders, he said: “Don’t let me frighten you. It would be horrible if I could convince you, shatter you.”