“I am developing ailments,” she said, meeting his questioning eyes. “It is nothing of any importance. John, I have something to say to you.”
“If you want to ask a favour,” he remarked smiling, “you have made it almost impossible for me to refuse you anything.”
“I am going to ask more than a favour,” she said slowly. “I am going to ask for your forgiveness.”
He was a little uneasy.
“I do not know what you mean,” he said, “but if you are referring to any little coolness since our marriage let us never speak of it again. I am something of an old fogey, Anna, I’m afraid, but if you treat me like this you will teach me to forget it.”
Annabel looked intently into her glass.
“John,” she said, “I am afraid that I am going to make you unhappy. I am very, very sorry, but you must listen to me.”
He relapsed into a stony silence. A few feet away, across the low vases of pink and white roses, sat Annabel, more beautiful to-night perhaps than ever before in her life. She wore a wonderful dress of turquoise blue, made by a great dressmaker for a function which she knew very well now that she would never attend. Her hair once more was arranged with its old simplicity. There was a new softness in her eyes, a hesitation, a timidity about her manner which was almost pathetic.
“You remember our first meeting?”
“Yes,” he answered hoarsely. “I remember it very well indeed. You have the look in your eyes to-night which you had that day, the look of a frightened child.”