She looked at him more attentively. "Why, no, I'm afraid not. You'll find the papers and magazines in here."
Mildly but firmly she drove him in before her, and closing the door, advanced to the two women in the window. Amherst's hopes leapt up: perhaps she had come to fetch the visitors upstairs! He strained his ears to catch what was being said, and while he was thus absorbed the door opened, and turning at the sound he found himself face to face with his wife.
He had not reflected that Justine would be in her nurse's dress; and the sight of the dark blue uniform and small white cap, in which he had never seen her since their first meeting in the Hope Hospital, obliterated all bitter and unhappy memories, and gave him the illusion of passing back at once into the clear air of their early friendship. Then he looked at her and remembered.
He noticed that she had grown thinner than ever, or rather that her thinness, which had formerly had a healthy reed-like strength, now suggested fatigue and languor. And her face was spent, extinguished—the very eyes were lifeless. All her vitality seemed to have withdrawn itself into the arch of dense black hair which still clasped her forehead like the noble metal of some antique bust.
The sight stirred him with a deeper pity, a more vehement compunction; but the impulse to snatch her to him, and seek his pardon on her lips, was paralyzed by the sense that the three women in the window had stopped talking and turned their heads toward the door.
He held his hand out, and Justine's touched it for a moment; then he said in a low voice: "Is there no other place where I can see you?"
She made a negative gesture. "I am afraid not to-day."
Ah, her deep sweet voice—how completely his ear had lost the sound of it!
She looked doubtfully about the room, and pointed to a sofa at the end farthest from the windows.
"Shall we sit there?" she said.