She passed her fingers through her husband’s rough hair, and turned his face gently toward her. She could see that he had been crying, and, with a sudden great tenderness, she drew his head on to her breast and kissed him without a word.
It was only by a great effort that he kept back the tears which came to his eyes again at this demonstration; and Annie wondered how it was that he was so much overcome.
“Don’t give way like this, Harry, I can’t understand you,” said she reprovingly, as he sat by her side and drew her toward him.
“It is very hard for poor old George, especially as he has known so long that it was coming; but William is provided for, as your uncle in Ireland is looking after him, and Stephen has a little money of his own and Lilian is all right, and you and I will have plenty of money next week.”
But Harry bounced up from the sofa at this point saying that it was luncheon-time, and she must be starving after her long rehearsal; and ten minutes later they, with William and Stephen, were sitting together at table, trying to divert their thoughts from their gloomy prospects by talking of the piece Annie was to play in for the first time that night.
As soon as luncheon was over, Harry insisted upon making his wife lie down to get some rest before the exciting duties of a “first night” began. Sleep was out of the question for her; she lay repeating the words of her part, which she had known for weeks, in a fever of unnecessary anxiety, lest the words should slip from her memory at the last, or lest, in the excitement of the all-important first performance, she should hurry her speeches unduly—a fault to which she was prone.
Harry softly opened the door from time to time and crept in, sometimes without her even hearing him. He always found her engaged in the same way, softly going over her lines to herself, and each time he retreated, looking harassed, and rather disappointed.
They had dinner early, for she had to be at the theater at half past seven. Harry went with her, and, as they drove along together in a hansom, he was very quiet and silent, holding her hand in his, and speaking only in answer to her. If she had not been so greatly preoccupied by anticipations of the night’s performance and nervousness about her own share in it, she must have noticed that there was still something unaccounted for in the unusual gravity, which was not sullenness, of her husband’s manner. As they drove up to the stage-door she noticed that he was shaking like a girl.
“You are not well, Harry,” she said, anxiously. “What is the matter with you?”
“It is only about you,” said he, in a low voice.