“In dreams,” she answered, “but not in women’s dreams of men or in men’s dreams of women.”
Just then a voice called from the hall, “Arthur!”—a shrill, shrewish voice with a note of habitual ill-temper in it, yet a ladylike voice.
There was a rustling of skirts and into the room hurried a small, fair woman, thin, and nervous in face, thin and nervous in body, with a sudden bulge of breadth and stoutness at the hips. She was in a tailor gown, expensive and unbecoming. Her hair was light brown, tightly drawn up, with a small knot at the crown of her head. There was a wide, bald expanse behind each ear. She had cold-blue, sensual eyes, the iris looking as if it were a thin button pasted to the ball. Yet she was not unattractive, making up in fire what she lacked in beauty.
“As you see, I am engaged,” Stanhope said, tranquilly.
“Pardon me for interrupting.” There was a covert sting of sarcasm in her voice. “But I must see you.”
He rose. “You’ll excuse me a moment?” he said to Emily.
He followed his wife into the hall and soon returned to his desk. “Everything begins badly with me,” he resumed abruptly. “Since I was a boy at school, the butt of the other boys because I was clumsy and supersensitive, it has been one long fight.” His tone was matter-of-fact, but something it suggested rather than uttered made Emily feel as if tears were welling up toward her eyes. “But,” he continued, “I go straight on. I sometimes stumble, sometimes crawl, but always straight on.”
“What a simple, direct man he is,” she thought, “and how strong! In another that would have seemed a boast. From him it seems the literal truth.”
“What are you thinking?” he interrupted.
“Just then? I was beginning to think how peculiar you are, and how—how—” her eyes danced—“indiscreet.”