Anne put her arms round Thomas’s neck. However much she desired it, she would not ask her husband in words not to go away from her. But to-day she knew something that was sure to retain him. She smiled into his face.
“Do you know what day to-morrow is?”
Thomas became cheerful.
“Of course, Sunday. I can go to shoot.”
“The third anniversary of our wedding,” whispered Anne.
“Is that so? To-morrow?” Thomas’s eyes became affectionate with grateful remembrance and he pressed his wife passionately to his breast. He felt her slender body bend from his knee into his arms. Her small, cool face, nestled close to his. Her hair smelt of violets. It made him reel....
“He does not say he will stay at home,” thought Anne, “he never says anything.” Her soul felt degraded by the caresses bestowed on her body. “Never anything but this.... I don’t want it.” She pushed her husband brusquely away and arranged her hair.
Thomas felt a cold void in his lap. For a moment he looked disconcerted into the air, then he collected himself. His love was a request from a man, not the humble supplication of a beggar. He frowned obstinately.
“When does your train start?” asked Anne, exhausting herself in the effort to appear unaffected.
The woman’s voice appeared quite strange to Illey. “She does not ask me to stay. She sends me away from her,” and his countenance became at once dark and hostile from the memory of thwarted desire. He pulled out his watch. He returned it to his pocket without looking at it. He began to hurry. He made his guns ready. The cartridge bag exhaled something left in it by the woods. The straps cracked delicately, just like out there, when they rubbed together over one’s shoulders; and his thoughts were no more in the room, but were wandering far afield over boundless, free lands, under the shining sun.