The talk stimulated Dot, her eyes and cheeks grew bright; two hours ago the ache at her heart had been intolerable, but the thought of Italy and music was easing it greatly.
From her corner, her needle in a wee muslin pinafore, the little mother looked at them with troubled brows. This kind of thing was inimical to the baby, to Larrie, to all of them, she almost wished her little girl had been born without music in her soul. [p 138] ]Then something made her catch her breath and pale suddenly under the brown of her skin. She had seen and interpreted the look of strange wistfulness in Sullivan Wooster’s eyes, and it made her heart grow cold. Dot looking up from her plans met his earnest gaze, and for some inexplicable reason blushed; the little mother in the corner said ‘God’ below her breath—she was not a woman of strong expressions, but her thoughts had leapt to terrible possibilities.
When Wooster rose to go, she went downstairs with him; they had been all the evening in Dot’s little sitting room.
‘You want me?’ he said half way down the hall, for her large eyes were speaking. They went into the drawing-room and he waited for her to speak, hat in hand.
‘I do not think this place is good for you,’ she said gently.
He looked down at the little fragile woman, her worn, lined face and great sad eyes were infinitely beautiful to him.
[p 139]
]‘No place ever agreed with me better,’ he said, puzzled.
Her lips grew severe.
‘It does not agree with you,’ she said very quietly.
Then he understood what the anxious eyes were saying, and was inexpressibly shocked that she should have guessed what he hardly allowed himself to know. For a moment he could find no words, he stood before her with bent head and paling face, then he looked up and saw grief and tenderness were in her face as well as anxiety. Terrible though the thing was, the little brown faced woman whom the waves of life had so buffeted, was sorry for him, her eyes grew humid, she put out her thin, tiny hand.