There was a movement among the others. They were going to have bridge. All had risen and their backs were turned. Quickly he laid his hand upon hers. Then:
"Oh, how you interest me!" he exclaimed, below his breath. "You've had a bad time, too. I know it. I feel it. You'll tell me, and I'll tell you, and there'll be something in the world I'll care about again. You see, I thought—I really was sure—that all the caring about things had been killed in me forever."
Her hand was quiet beneath the throbbing of his own. He had a singular hand for a man—one of those rare hands that pale and flush, that shiver and burn.
It burned now, but hers had no responding heat or throb. If his quivered with a passionate call for some response, the response came not. He had to recognize that no sleeping ardor stirred to the call of his caress.
But her eyelids drooped lower and lower until her lashes lay close against her cheeks, and then as he looked—and longed—he saw suddenly with an ecstatic thrill of surprise and delight that tears shone among them.
"You feel—something?" he murmured breathlessly. "What?"
"I feel for you," she answered. "You are so young. How old are you? Do you mind telling me?"
Certainly he had not expected that answer. "I am twenty-six," he said. "But why?"
"Twenty-six!" Her eyes were still closed. "I am thirty," she said softly. "That is why."
He felt quite bewildered; in a maze as to her meaning. "I know you've had a bad time, too," he said again. "You'll tell me all about it, won't you? Don't join the bridge crowd. They'll be playing there for hours, and we can sit here and have ourselves to ourselves. Do! Do! I want to know such a lot, and you'll tell me all."