Her voice was tremulous and her eyes bright with the indefinable feeling which seized upon her the moment she saw his face. Her utterance of his name was a cry of anxiousness and fear.
"What!" he said. "Are you here yet?"
He came to her and laid a hand upon her shoulder in a rough caress.
"You'd better go to bed," he said to her. "It's late, and I've got work to do."
"I felt," she answered, "as if I'd like to wait an' see you. I knowed I should sleep better for it—I always do."
There was a moment's pause in which she stroked his sleeve with her withered hand. Then he spoke.
"Sleep better!" he said. "That's a queer notion. You've got queer fancies, you women—some on you."
Then he stooped and kissed her awkwardly. He always did it with more or less awkwardness and lack of ease, but it never failed to make her happy.
"Now you've done it," he said. "You'd better go, old lady, and leave me to finish what I've got to do."