“Mr. Grove?”
“Yes miss; a dark gentleman.”
Miriam rose from her chair. James had gone after a moment of sympathetic waiting, back down the basement stairs to her dinner. Miriam felt herself very tall and slender—set apart and surrounded; healed of all fighting and effort. She went quickly through the hall thinking of nothing; herself, walking down Harriett’s garden path. At the door of the waiting-room she hesitated. Mr. Grove was the other side of the door, waiting for her to come in. She opened the door with a flourish and advanced with stiffly outstretched hand. Before she said “teeth?” in a cheerful breezy professional tone that exploded into the past and scattered it she saw the pained anxiousness of his face and the flush that had risen under his dark skin.
“No” he said recoiling swiftly from his limp handshake and sitting abruptly down on the chair from which he had risen. Miriam watched him go helplessly on to say in stiff resentfulness what he had come to say while she stood apologetically at his chair side.
“I meant to write to you—two or three times.”
“Oh why didn’t you?” she responded emphatically.... Why can’t I be quiet and hear what he has to say? He must have wanted to see me dreadfully to come here like this.
His eyes were fixed blindly upon the far-off window.
“Yes. I wanted to very much. How do you like your life here?” He was flushing again. His skin still had that shiny film over it, so unlike the clear snaky brilliance of the eyes. They were dreadful and all the rest flappy and floppy and somehow feverish.
“Oh—I like it immensely.”
“That is a very good thing.”