"I am thinking it over. . . . I wonder that——"
With the fingers of one hand she smoothed her glove on the fingers of the other—"I wonder that I didn't think of it long ago. I ought to have thought of it. I ought to have seen."
"I can't tell you how I hate to have been the——"
"Please don't say any more," she requested in a tone that made it impossible for a man so timid as he to disobey.
Neither spoke until they were in Fifty-ninth Street; then he, unable to stand the strain of a silent walk of fifteen blocks, suggested that they take the car down. She assented. In the car the stronger light enabled him to see that she was pale in a way quite different from her usual clear, healthy pallor, that there was an unfamiliar look about her mouth and her eyes—a look of strain, of repression, of resolve. These signs and the contrast of her mute motionlessness with her usual vivacity of speech and expression and gesture made him uneasy.
"I'd advise," said he, "that you reflect on it all carefully and consult with me before you do anything—if you think you ought to do anything."
She made no reply. At the door of the house he had to reach for her hand, and her answer to his good night was a vague absent echo of the word. "I've only done what I saw was my duty," said he, appealingly.
"Yes, I suppose so. I must go in."
"And you'll talk with me before you——"
The door had closed behind her; she had not known he was speaking.