“Alone?”
“Yes.”
Gannett threw away his cigarette: the sound of her voice made him want to see her face.
“Shall we have a little light?” he suggested.
She made no answer and he lifted the globe from the lamp and put a match to the wick. Then he looked at her.
“Anything wrong? You look done up.”
She sat glancing vaguely about the little sitting-room, dimly lit by the pallid-globed lamp, which left in twilight the outlines of the furniture, of his writing-table heaped with books and papers, of the tea-roses and jasmine drooping on the mantel-piece. How like home it had all grown—how like home!
“Lydia, what is wrong?” he repeated.
She moved away from him, feeling for her hatpins and turning to lay her hat and sunshade on the table.
Suddenly she said: “That woman has been talking to me.”