He laughed silently: “I’ll stay here.”
Nan disappeared. Lounging against the window-sill opposite the door, he waited. After a long time the door was stealthily reopened. Nan tiptoed out. She closed it softly behind her: “I waited for him to go to sleep,” she explained as she started down the corridor with de Spain. “He’s had so much pain to-day: I hope he will sleep.”
“I hope so, too,” exclaimed de Spain fervently.
Nan ignored the implication. She looked straight ahead. She had nothing to say. De Spain, walking beside her, devoured her with his eyes; listened to her footfalls; tried to make talk; but Nan was silent.
Standing on the wide veranda outside the front door, she assented to the beauty of the distant illumination but not enthusiastically. De Spain declared it could be seen very much better from the street below. Nan thought she could see very well where they stood. But by this time she was answering questions––dryly, it is true and in monosyllables, but answering. De Spain leading the way a step or two forward at a time, coaxed her down the driveway.
She stood again irresolute, he drinking in the fragrance of her presence after the long separation and playing her reluctance guardedly. “Do you know,” she exclaimed with sudden resentment, “you make it awfully hard to be mean to you?”
With a laugh he caught her hand and made her walk down the hospital steps. “You may be as mean as you like,” he answered indifferently. “Only, never ask me to be mean to you.”
“I wish to heaven you would be,” she retorted.
“Do you remember,” he asked, “what we were doing a year ago to-day?”