“Don’t touch me! Let me lie here till I’m good, and then you may pick me up and forgive me.”
“But listen. I’ve something else to tell you, something that perhaps you will like to hear.”
“What is it?” She raised her head and looked up at him.
“We shall be very poor, as I told you, and sha’n’t be able to have a nice house, or many pretty things. But I’m going to take you to live in Paris——”
“Paris!” He had scarcely uttered the word when she repeated it like a shout of triumph, and springing up from the floor, snatched a lace-bordered and embroidered sheet which was lying on a little white porcelain stove in one corner of the room, and wrapping it round her with one dexterous sweeping movement, slipped off her bathing-dress like a loose skin from underneath it, and flinging herself on to the sofa beside her husband, put a transformed and glowing face up to his, as she whispered in a tone of rapture: “Then I don’t mind anything—anything, for I shall see mamma!”
With an uncontrollable impulse George drew himself away from her and started to his feet. He felt sick, and a film gathered before his eyes, preventing him from finding the handle of the door, which he sought with cold, clammy fingers.
“George!” said a low voice behind him. He scarcely heard, scarcely recognised it, and made no answer.
“George!” A little hand found its way to his throat, and was laid against his neck.
His arms fell down listlessly, and as he stood still and felt that he was touched by clinging fingers, and heard Nouna’s voice in its most caressing tones, his sight came again; he looked down and put his hands on his wife’s shoulder.
“Why are you going away, George? Why are you going away?”