“It is not raining once more,” he said; “let us go out and walk far. That will do you quite well; I cannot bear that you weep.”
He added the last words in a lower tone, and coming close behind her chair suddenly stooped.
She realized all in a flash where he was, what he was meditating, the half-open door, and writhed quickly out of the chair and away.
“Why not?” he asked, looking after her unsmilingly. “It will do you no hurt and me much good.”
“I’m out of the habit,” she said shortly, recollecting Jack’s words on that famous night of his arrival.
They were both on their feet, she by the window and he by the chair which she had just left.
“Was your husband very tendre?” he asked.
She felt the corners of her mouth give way under the stressful shock of this question. “I might say, ‘I never tried him to see,’” she thought, “but he never would understand,” and so there was an instant of silence.
“Why do you smile?” he demanded, smiling himself.
“Because we don’t call men ‘tender.’ We call meat ‘tender’ and men ‘affectionate.’”