Neale leaned back in his chair now, looked around for his; cap, took it up, and looked back at her, quietly, still smiling a little. Marise thought, "Neale is as natural in his life as a very great actor is in his art. Whatever he does, even to the most trifling gesture, is done with so great a simplicity that it makes people like me feel fussy and paltry."
There was a moment's silence, Neale frankly very tired, looking rather haggard and grim, giving himself a moment's respite in his chair before standing up to go; Marise passive, drawing long quiet breaths, her hands folded on her knees; Agnes, her back to the other two, hanging about the sideboard, opening and shutting the drawers, and shifting their contents aimlessly from one to the other.
Then Agnes turned, and showed a shamed, nervous old face. "I don't know what's got into me, Miss Marise, that I ain't no good to myself nor anybody else. I'm afraid to go back into the kitchen alone." She explained to Neale, "I never was in the house with a dead body before, Mr. Crittenden, and I act like a baby about it, scared to let Mrs. Crittenden out of my sight. If I'm alone for a minute, seems 'sthough . . ." She glanced over her shoulder fearfully and ended lamely, "Seems 'sthough I don't know what might happen."
"I won't leave you alone, Agnes, till it is all over," said Marise, and this time she kept contempt not only out of her voice, but out of her heart. She was truly only very sorry for the old woman with her foolish fears.
Agnes blinked and pressed her lips together, the water in her eyes. "I'm awful glad to hear you say that!" she said fervently.
Marise closed her eyes for a moment. It had suddenly come to her that this promise to Agnes meant that she could not see Neale alone till after the funeral, tomorrow, when she went back into life again. And she found that she immensely wanted to see him alone this very hour, now! And Agnes would be there . . . !
She opened her eyes and saw Neale standing up, his cap in his hand, looking at her, rough and brown and tall and tired and strong; so familiar, every line and pose and color of him; as familiar and unexciting, as much a part of her, as her own hand.
As their eyes met in the profound look of intimate interpenetration which can pass only between a man and a woman who have been part of each other, she felt herself putting to him clearly, piercingly, the question which till then she had not known how to form, "Neale, what do you want me to do?"
She must have said it aloud, and said it with an accent which carried its prodigious import, for she saw him turn very white, saw his eyes deepen, his chest lift in a great heave. He came towards her, evidently not able to speak for a moment. Then he took her hands . . . the memory of a thousand other times was in his touch . . .
He looked at her as though he could never turn his eyes away. The corners of his mouth twitched and drew down.