"Oh—I don't mind."
He glanced at the tray. "Why, you didn't eat anything!"
"No."
"Are you quite sure you're not ill?"
"Quite."
"Well, if there's anything I can——"
"Nothing, thanks."
He went to the bed, bent over and kissed her. "Good night."
"Good night." She was reading again; and his thoughts returned to his work as he closed her bedroom door behind him. If he had looked in on her an hour later, he might have seen that she had not yet turned the page she pretended to begin, to get rid of him—or, rather, to help him go where he really wished to be. And he would have distrusted her assurance that she was not ill. For her eyes, wide and circled and wretched, were staring into space. She was indeed ill—ill of loneliness, of heart-emptiness, of that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick. And the rain streamed on and on. The sight of it by day filled her with the despair that lowers and rages. The sound of it monotonously pattering upon the balcony at night changed her despair from active to passive, from vain revolt to lying inert in the wash of inky waves under inky sky.
The sympathy between her and Winchie was so close that they were like one rather than like two. He had early discovered her sensitiveness to the weather, but never before had he seen her frankly downhearted. He did not annoy her. He watched her furtively, his little heart aching. He spent most of his time near the west windows of the upstairs sitting room. From them, now that the trees were almost bare, he could see part of the Donaldson's roof—the part topped by a weather vane. He knew that so long as the vane pointed east the rains would pour down, and his mother's low spirits would continue—that when it should veer to the west the rain would cease and the sky clear.