When Cutter came in that night Helen had retired. He turned on the light. “Asleep, my dear?” he asked.
“No,” she replied in that tone a woman has when her voice sounds like the nice, small voice of your conscience.
He came and sat down on the side of the bed, regarded her cheerfully, like the messenger of good tidings. She lay very flat, hands folded across her breast, face in repose, no expression, eyes wide open, a state of self-consciousness bordering onto unconsciousness which women sometimes sink into as a sort of last ditch.
Cutter was so elated about something he did not observe that his wife was dying momentarily. He wanted to talk. He had something to tell her. “You were splendid to-night, Helen,” he began.
She revived sufficiently to ask him if the dinner was “all right.”
“Dinner!” he exclaimed. “I scarcely noticed what we had to eat. You took the shine off the dinner. You were stunning. Means a lot to a man for his wife to—make good; sets him up. Shippen was impressed, I can tell you that.”
Shippen! She did not speak the name, but her glance, slowly turned on him, meant it.
“How did you like him?” he wanted to know.
“I did not like him,” she answered distinctly.
He stared at her. Her respiration was the same; her eyes coldly impersonal. He sprang to his feet, kicked off his shoes, flung off his clothes, snapped off the light and retired to the bitter frost of that bed. He lay flat, clinched his hands across his breast and worked his toes as if these toes were the claws of a particularly savage beast. His chest rose and fell like bellows. His red brown eyes snapped in the dark.