“Of course; naturally. What I mean is—you did see him. Well, this is what I would like to know. Did you see him when you sat at the table with your head down, before we left the room?”
The question—he had not meditated it—it had come to him instinctively, like a whisper from some unseen friend—was as unexpected to her as it had been to him. She had expected, no doubt, to be questioned as to Malcolm’s dress, attitude, and demeanour. She kept her eyes fixed; but a tremor knotted her brows, as if with bewilderment.
“As I sat at the table?” she repeated. “How do you mean?”
He did not take his eyes off her. He seemed to slide his hand along a sudden clue and to find it holding.
“I mean the vision of him standing beside the fountain. Did it come to you first while we were at the window seeing nothing?”
She stared at him, and the bewilderment gained her eyes. “A vision? What do you mean by a vision? No. It was when you had gone. It was when I went to the window that I saw him standing there.” Yet, even as she spoke, he saw that she was thinking with a new intensity.
Something had been gained. Safety required him, at the moment, not to examine it overmuch, not to arouse her craft. “I see,” he said, as if assenting, and again he turned from her and again he came back, with a new question. “You think he came because he is suffering?”
She had looked away from him while she thought, and as her eyes turned to him he saw the new edge to their hatred. “Yes. Suffering,” she said. And her eyes added: “Because of you.”
“You told Tony he was suffering?”
“I answered her questions.”