"I don't know why you should be so unkind to-day," Mrs. Reffold said, with pathetic patience. "I can't understand you. You have never spoken like this before."
"No," he said; "but I have thought like this before. All the hours you have left me lonely, I have been thinking like this, with my heart full of bitterness against you, until that little girl, that Little Brick came along."
After that, it was some time before he spoke. He was thinking of his Little Brick, and of all the pleasant hours he had spent with her, and of the kind, wise words she had spoken to him, an ignorant fellow. She was something like a companion.
So he went on thinking, and Mrs. Reffold went on embroidering. She was now feeling herself to be almost a heroine. It is a very easy matter to make oneself into a heroine or a martyr. Selfish, neglectful? What did he mean? Oh, it was just part of his illness. She must go on bearing her burden as she had borne it these many months. Her rightful position was in a London ball-room. Instead of which, she had to be shut up in an Alpine village: a hard lot. It was little enough pleasure she could get, and apparently her husband grudged her that. His manner to her this afternoon was not such as to encourage her to stay in from her drive on another occasion. To-morrow she would go sledging.
That flash of light which reveals ourselves to ourselves had not yet come to Mrs. Reffold.
She looked at her husband, and thought from his restfulness that he had gone to sleep, and she was just beginning to write to that particular friend at Cannes, to tell her what a trial she was undergoing, when Mr. Reffold called her to his side.
"Winifred," he said gently, and there was tenderness in his voice, and love written on his face, "Winifred, I am sorry if I have been sharp to you. Little Brick says we mustn't come down like sledge-hammers on each other; and that is what I have been doing this afternoon. Perhaps I have been hard: I am such an illness to myself, that I must be an illness to others too. And you weren't meant for this sort of thing—were you? You are a bright beautiful creature, and I am an unfortunate dog not to have been able to make you happier. I know I am irritable. I can't help myself, indeed I can't."
This great long fellow was so yearning for love and sympathy.
What would it not have been to him if she had gathered him into her arms, and soothed all his irritability and suffering with her love?
But she pressed his hand, and kissed him lightly on the cheek, and told him that he had been a little sharp, but that she quite understood, and that she was not hurt. Her charm of manner gave him some satisfaction; and when Bernardine came in a few minutes later, she found Mr. Reffold looking happier and more contented than she had ever seen him. Mrs. Reffold, who was relieved at the interruption, received Bernardine warmly, though there was a certain amount of shyness which she had never been able to conquer in Bernardine's presence. There was something in the younger woman which quelled Mrs. Reffold: it may have been some mental quality, or it may have been her boots!