"That is not language for a wife to use to a husband."
She rose from the desk and, without looking at him, went into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.
She was working in the garden beneath the west windows. She moved among the flowers, as restless and graceful as any other of the elves always hovering about blooming things—bees, humming birds, butterflies. It was a rare chance to study the marvels of pose of which the human body is capable. Now she was stooping, now kneeling; bending forward, backward, to one side; or, erect and stretching upward, to relieve a tall rosebush of a dead leaf or spray. And the lines of her figure, ever changing, were ever alluring. Her arms, too—and her neck—how smooth and slenderly round, and how intensely alive! Her whole skin seemed aureoled with invisible, tremulous, magnetic waves. She was wearing a big pale-green garden hat; her hair was perfectly done, as always—as if it had taken no time or trouble, yet so that it formed a delightful frame for her small, delicate face, and splintered and reflected every stray of sunlight that dodged in under the brim. Her short skirt revealed slim, tapering ankles and small feet. There are feet that are merely short; then there are feet such as hers—exquisitely small—not useless looking, but the reverse. The same quality of the exquisite was in her figure. She was small, but she was not short. Her smallness enabled a perfection nature never gets in the long or the large. She made largeness suggest coarseness. Women of her form send thrilling through their lovers the feeling of being able completely to enfold and to possess.
All alone and thinking only of the flowers, she entered one of the narrow paths that led toward the veranda. She stretched upward to re-curl a refractory tendril. Both arms were extended, her head thrown back, the rosy bronze face upturned—pathetic, yet laughter-loving mouth, eyes of deep, deep green. Like one awakening from a profound sleep she slowly became conscious that she and Basil Gallatin were gazing into each other's eyes with only the trellised creeper between. And his look made her heart leap. She straightened herself, colored, paled, stood trembling. The next thing she distinctly knew, he had come round to the lawn at the edge of the garden in which she was working.
"How you startled me!" she said, in a careless, casual tone.
As he did not answer, she glanced at him. He was standing with eyes down. And his look made her vaguely afraid.
"Are you going to help me to-day?" she asked, resolved to brave it through.
"I can't stand it!" he cried, his voice trembling with passion. "I love you. I must go. I shall go as soon as Vaughan comes back. Until then I'll keep to the other part of the grounds."
"Why not just do it, and not talk so much?" she demanded, suddenly angry.
"If you had ever loved," said he humbly, "you'd understand. But I didn't intend to say these things. I came to tell you Vaughan's away. They telegraphed for him to hurry to Washington—something about the duties on a lot of new instruments."