‘Indeed you shall do nothing of the sort,’ said she. ‘It is quite unnecessary. I absolutely forbid it.’
For a moment it was a mere tussle of will between them, and Norah’s reasons were the stronger. She looked at him a moment, and knew she had won, and without more words went back to the library and put on her over-boots, and gathered up the book-slips she had made that evening. He followed her as far as the hall, and waited for her.
‘Don’t look at my feet,’ she said gaily. ‘They are officially invisible like the legs of the Queen of Spain.’
The grim mouth smiled, and the stern eyes grew kindly. She knew that transformation so well now.
‘You are very obstinate,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you let me walk home with you?’
‘I am right,’ she said. ‘And I think your plan was wrong.’
‘They weren’t rude to you?’ he asked, growing grim again.
‘Ah, you shouldn’t have asked that,’ she said. ‘They were exceedingly polite.’
He let her out into the snow, and felt that fire went with her; then returned to the drawing-room where he found unquestionable ice. Little sour wreaths of mist were already afloat in Mrs Keeling’s mind, which, though not yet condensed into actual thought, were chilling down to it in that narrow receptacle. Alice took her embroidery, and went upstairs, but his wife sat rather upright by the fire, looking at the evening paper which she held upside down. She meant to behave with perfect propriety again, but wished him to begin, so as to launch her propriety on a fair and even keel.
For his part he had known so many of those evenings, when the dinner-party went away precisely at half-past ten, and he was left to hear long comments by his wife on the soup and the beef and the grouse and the pudding and the savoury, and what Dr Inglis said, and what Mrs Fyson thought. He hoped, when he first came back, after seeing Norah fade into the snow-storm, that he was to be regaled with such reminiscences, but hoped rather against hope. No reminiscences came to his aid, and he began to be aware, from the ice-bound conditions, that he must expect something far less jovial and trivial. But he had no accusing conscience, and if she chose to read her evening paper upside down in silence, he could at least read the morning paper the right way up. Then, as he would not give her a lead, make some remark, that is to say, to which she could take exception, she had to begin.