From then on there was a changed atmosphere in the house. We had all been afraid of one another and of one another’s misunderstandings.
When Dorrie had gone to bed, Vi would sit within the circle of the lamp and read to me while I lay back on my pillows in the shadows, watching how the gold light broke about her face and hands. She was always doing something, either reading or sewing, as though when we were alone she were afraid to trust herself.
One evening she said to me, “You haven’t asked if there are any letters.”
“I wasn’t expecting any.”
“Weren’t expecting any! Why not?”
“Because none of my friends know that I’ve come to Sheba.”
She drew her face back from the lamp; her sewing fell from her hands. My words had reminded us both of the guilty situation which lay unchanged behind our present attitude.
It was she who broke the silence. “When you were taken ill I wrote Ruthita and told her—and told her that you were being nursed in our house.”
She brought me my letters and then made an excuse to leave me to myself. My father had written; so had the Snow Lady. After expressing concern for my health, the tone of their letters became constrained and unnatural; they refrained from accusing me, but they had guessed. Ruthita’s was an awkward, shamefaced little note—it puzzled me by omitting to say anything of Halloway.
More and more after this Vi showed fear of being left alone with me; any moment a slip of the tongue might betray our passion. Frequently during the evening hours Mr. Carpenter would join us. He would steal into the room while Vi was reading and sit down by my bedside. I began to have great sympathy for the man. Vi’s actions to him were those of a daughter, and he, when he addressed her, called her “My child.” Both their attitudes to one another were wrong—it hurt me to watch them; they made such efforts to create the impression that everything was well. Sitting beside me while she read, he would fasten his eyes on her. If she smiled across at him in turning a page, his heavy face would flood with a quite disproportionate joy. He was too fine a man for the part he was playing; he had strength of character and mastery over men.