"But what extravagance!"
"You don't come home every day," he said, and he spoke as though she had come on a far journey.
Afterwards, when she lay warm and comforted in bed, he came to see her. He made up the fire, he altered the opening of the window by an inch, he felt the heat of the hot-water bottle, and hovered on the threshold to find more to do.
"I wish I had a thermometer," he murmured.
"I'm glad I broke it. I refuse to have my temperature taken. I'm much too sleepy. Good-night, dear. I'm so comfortable."
"Good-night, my child," he said, and crept down the stairs in a great happiness of hope.
[CHAPTER XXVII]
Very late, on a dark and moonless night in March, when the larches were stiff and silent under the frost that bound the hills, and the air was of an imprisoned stillness, Janet, sewing by lamplight, heard a dog's bark cut through the quiet, and then hurried footsteps that were Alec's.
Her fingers lost their steadiness for an instant, but as he opened the door she peered round the lamp and said sharply: "So you're here at last! You've not touched my doorstep for four weeks, and now you come at this time of night and expect a welcome! What made you think I would be up?"