“Don’t do that,” she said, as if she would erase the scowl.
When they were seated he gave her the details of his meeting with Carman, and with the recital of his disappointment its sharpness was repeated. He leaned over, his elbows on his knees, and clutched his hair in his fists. For an instant a kind of relief came to Lavinia, a relief that a crisis in her life had been postponed, a crisis from which, instinctively, she had shrunk. Her life could go on for a while as it had always gone on; change, which mortals dread, was delayed. Then in another moment her sympathy went out to him; she was on the floor at his knees, her arms about him.
“Don’t, dear, don’t,” she pleaded. “Why, it is nothing. What does it matter? What does anything matter, so long as we have each other?”
She stroked his hair, she called him by all her endearing names. She tried to take his hands from his face, that she might get him to look at her. But he resisted.
“No,” he said. “I’m no good; I’m a failure; I’m worse than a failure. I’m a fool, a poor, weak, silly fool.”
“Hush, Glenn, hush!” she whispered, as if he were uttering blasphemies. “You must not, you must not!”
She shook him in a kind of fear.
“Look at me!” she said. “Look at me!”
He remained obdurate, slowly shaking his head from side to side.
“Look at me!” Lavinia repeated. “Don’t you see—don’t you see that—I love you?”