“And we are going to forget—going to forget it quite, for just a little hour, Harry, Harry darling!”
Her voice, on the old remembered note of fondness, touched him with a strange power. Something crumbled in him.
He sat down suddenly in the indicated chair, stared, he also, into the fire.
“It’s a bitter mockery, Christine!”
“No,” she answered. “It’s the real thing—for just once—the real thing.”
They sat in silence for long moments where the clock ticked loudly. She stretched her hand out to him.
“Harry! Hold my hand in yours—like you used to do—in the old days before you married me. It will help so much. Can you remember it?—the old touch that used to thrill?”
He obeyed without a word, took her little palm between his two large hands, pressed it close. Its death-like coldness struck him and, in defiance of it, he emphasized his contact. With a sudden tenderness that was awkwardly unpractised, he endeavoured to instil a little of his own warmth into it. As he did so, he felt as it were a sluice-gate open in him. A long-repressed sentimentality asserted itself, invaded his lonely soul like a flood. He looked at her. If only—his protective secondary personality, dominant for so many years, reacted jealously, perverted his regret—if only she could have understood him a little more!
It was she who spoke.