He shook his head in protest.
"After you," he said determinedly.
Her lips moved to speech, and then she stayed herself. After all was not stolid acquiescence best; did not that kill sentiment, and was not sentiment the one thing to be dreaded in this situation? She lifted her shoulders in an indifferent little shrug and then she drank. He watched her quietly. She refilled the cup and held it to his lips. He moved his chin in a queer, cramped little nod of acknowledgment and drank in his turn. And there was a hint of reluctance in the little sigh with which he relinquished the emptied cup.
She refilled it and held it for him again, anticipating his protests with the declaration that she herself would have no more, disliked it, wished, rather, for food. And so she watched him drink for the second time, slowly, swallowing tiny mouthfuls, dwelling on it. A queer sense of unreality gripped her as she did so. It was as if she waited on and tolerated the foibles of a child. A hundred times she had done as much or more for her small nephew, but without this protective sense in the doing of it. She realized the fact with a sort of self-inquisition. It pleased her to see this man where her help was essential to him. Some instinct of the same kind had been awake in her as she nursed and watched over him at the silo, but it had died or slept in the intervening weeks of ordinary converse at Gibraltar and on the yacht. It woke again now; and it had grown unwatched. Why, she asked herself. Why?
And then came the question of food. The basket contained no accessories, merely the bare essentials. She had to break the bread and divide the cheese with her fingers, bit by bit. And bit by bit she had to place each portion between his teeth. She shrank, or she told herself that it was shrinking, as her hand brushed his moustache, but was there anything truly repellent in this suddenly intimate action? Again self-inquisition denied it. Pleasure was in the sensation, not pain.
She rose, at last, when the contents of the basket were finished, and placed it on the table. Returning she flicked the crumbs from his shoulder and then, with a little sigh, sat down. He looked at her gravely, but with a gravity which tells of emotion restrained.
"Thank you again," he said. "Thank you for everything, but—why?"
She gave a little start. Was not this the question that her inner self had been dinning in her ears for half an hour? She was humbling herself, sacrificing herself even, in the eyes of such as Landon, lowering herself to serve this man. Why?
And as she debated she avoided his gaze lest he should read indecision in her glance. And yet the answer should have been glib on her lips; she had, indeed, already given it to Landon. Duty to a servant suffering in her service. But was that all?
"Did you expect me to choose the company of your cousin?" she asked slowly. "The very sight of him revolts me. I cannot stand it!"