"It—has been so hot all day," she said with a little look of apologising, remembering to gather her terror and misery tightly round her like a cloak, so that it should not touch him, so that he should not by so much as a flutter of it feel that it was there; for then he would watch her, and she—she gripped her hands together—would be lost, lost....
"I think I'm—tired," she said.
He became immediately all reasonableness, the kindly reasonableness of one who has cleared away much confusion and can now afford to wait.
He got up, too, agreeing about the heat of the day, and reminding her also of its length, of the journeys by land and water it had contained, and of the inadequate meal of rusks that had been their sole support for nearly six hours. No wonder she was tired. He was tenderness and concern itself. "Poor little dear thing," he whispered, drawing her hand through his arm and holding it there clasped in his other hand as he led her away towards the entrance and went with her out into the streets again, making her walk slowly lest she should be more tired, restraining her when she tried to hurry; and seeing a cheerful restaurant with crowded tables on the pavement in front of it, he suggested they should stop at it and have supper.
But Ingeborg said in a low voice, kept carefully controlled, that she was afraid she would go to sleep over supper she was so tired; might she have some milk at the hôtel and go to bed?
His tenderness for her as he conceded the milk was nurse-like.
But he, she murmured, he must have supper—would he not send her back in a cab and stay here and have some?
No, he would certainly not trust a thing so precious to some careless cabman; he would take her back to the hôtel, and then perhaps have food.
But the hôtel, she murmured, was so stuffy—did he think he would like food there?
Well, perhaps when she was safely in it he would come out again to one of these pavement places.