Never had she felt like this, the nameless terror, the beating of her heart like hammers in her breast. And all in this maddening moment, she realized that she dared not approach him. He did not feel like a husband, but like a stranger who did not belong in this house.
She stood leaning against the spindle-legged pillar of the veranda and waited. She did not know for what, but as if she expected a blow. And she wanted it to fall. She wished to be put out of this pain as soon as possible.
Cutter laid aside his paper, stood up, swept a glance this way and that as if he could not decide which way to retreat, then he went inside, and affected to be looking for a book on the shelves in the parlor. He heard Helen pass down the hall, knew that she had halted a moment in the doorway. He felt as if he was being trailed. What he wished was that she would have dinner, so that he could get through with this business. It must be done after dinner, because he could not sit down to the table with her afterward.
She came back presently to fetch him to this meal. She wanted to cling on his arm, as she used to do years ago. But he evaded her, she could not have told how, only that if he had shouted to her not to touch him, she would not have been surer of what he meant.
They accomplished this dinner together. Cutter keeping his eyes withdrawn from her, taking his food with that sort of foreign correctness which a man never practices at his own table. Many times they had passed through a meal in silence, but not a silence like this, potential, strained. Once Cutter caught sight of Helen’s hand, which was trembling. But he spared himself the sight of her face.
She scanned his, marked the new lines in it, the sullen droop to his eyes, usually so frank. She recalled the fact that he had not gone into their bedroom during this day; that he had kept to the public places in this house, as if it were no longer his house; that he had answered all her questions briefly; that in the garden he had drawn back from the touch of her hand; that now he was hurrying secretly to finish dining. She had premonitions of some unimaginable disaster which intimately concerned herself, but she could not bear to think what it was. By a forlorn faith many a woman receives strength to remain stupidly blind to her fate. Helen had some sort of faith that, if she kept perfectly quiet, this horror, whatever it was, would pass without being revealed to her. Then suddenly her courage broke.
Cutter thrust back his chair, rose from the table and made for the door.
She followed him. “George,” she cried, “what is it? I am frightened”; the last word keyed to a wail.
They were standing where she had overtaken him in the hall. He took out his watch, stared at it. “Twenty minutes past seven. The express is due at eight,” he muttered with the air of a man who times himself, leaving not a minute to spare.
“Yes, the express is due then, but—” she began.