“Captain Lewin was very late in coming home. He is sleeping heavily. I am afraid it will take some time to rouse him,” she heard her own voice saying, in sentences as concise as his. “Would it not be better to send one of the men? I can call them in a moment.”
She turned towards the door, but his outstretched hand guided her back without his having moved a step.
“I’ll rouse him!” he said grimly. “Which is his room?”
There was a touch of resentment in him, which he himself did not know was there, that this heavy sleeper owned the woman before him. A man should sleep lightly with her near by, nor ever lose his happy consciousness of her even in sleep. There was something gross in the suggestion of her husband’s heavy slumber.
“Where is Captain Lewin?” he said curtly.
Again she saw in her brain the quiet, orderly room, the degraded figure, the drunken lethargy that no imperious summons would break. Here was Ally’s chance, and he had tossed it away for a momentary self-indulgence. She felt in her bitter impotence that his whole life might be squandered after such a fashion, for where was her confidence now?
And the Administrator was waiting.
“He is very tired,” she repeated dully, looking up at Gregory’s sinister height with eyes which had grown piteous. It seemed to her as if the foundations of the man were made of granite, and she were hurling herself against them vainly.
Something in her face seemed to strike him, however, for he bent a little nearer to her, and looked almost curiously in her face.
“Is he ill?” he said; and the suppressed tones of his voice were a mere vibration.