There was reproach in his tone, even a kind of hardness that had come into his manner more than once of late. His usually quick-following fit of remorseful tenderness never quite healed the hurt.
"Of course, ask your friends if you like."
She got up and went out of the room. Back and forth under the big tulip-tree she walked in the crisp October air, commanding her face to a pale incommunicativeness, but clinching and unclinching her hands.
A deep discouragement had been growing upon her at Ethan's feverish eagerness to get to work. "You don't seem to have any time at all for play nowadays," she had said to him, half laughing, more than once. He sat over his writing-table all day, and he read late into the night. For days and days they had not been alone in the old idle blessed way of lovers, and never had she needed him so much. "How shall I be able to go on," she said to herself, "unless he keeps close beside me?"
It was at a garden-party at Julia's that Val went across the lawn to Ethan at the end of a game of tennis, and said:
"I'd like to give a party at the Fort before we go. What do you think?"
"What kind of a party?"
"A ball. We could light up the grounds and make it look lovely. There's never been a big party at the Fort."
"Well, I don't mind. But you haven't much time now to get it up."
"Let's go and find Julia and Mr. Scherer, and talk it over."