“So you have come back?” she said.
Her eyes were deep and very intense; the man as he met their shining look felt certain of his welcome. He advanced towards her quickly.
“Couldn’t stick it any longer, Pam,” he said. “I wanted you.”
He held out his arms. She went forward unhesitatingly, and put her arms about his neck and drew his face to hers and kissed him.
“I am so glad you have come home,” she said.
Arnott’s clasp of her tightened.
“Oh! Pam,” he said, “how good, how jolly to have you again.”
He drew her inside the room, looking away from her a little awkwardly, looking about him with an overdone air of ease. Pamela also, now that their greeting was over, assumed an outward calm which she certainly was not feeling, and busied herself with the tea things, having an equal difficulty it seemed in meeting his eyes. That, she discovered later, was one of the developments of their adjusted relations, a sort of furtiveness, that comprised a mixture of deprecation and a shamed shyness that was more instinctive than anything else. The realisation of this hurt her; it detracted immensely from the beauty of their love. But just at first she did not recognise it other than as a temporary embarrassment; it did not distress her particularly.
“I was just going to have a lonely tea,” she said, and rang the bell for a fresh supply; “and now—there’s you!”
She glanced at him brightly, a swift colour flushing her cheeks. He seated himself on the sofa near the tea-table, and studied her curiously when he believed himself unobserved. He speculated on what might be in her mind, what the actual thoughts and feeling were which she hid so successfully behind her welcoming manner. For the first time within his knowledge of her he realised a subtlety, a certain secretive force, which he had not suspected in her. It was like coming unexpectedly upon a familiar spot and finding the view altered and contracted by surprising innovations. One felt that behind the obstructions the prospect was exactly the same; it was one’s own view that was restricted and created these new impressions.