"You'll strain your eyes, so far from the light."
Apparently he did not hear.
Sighing restlessly, she rose and went into the kitchen, on the pretext of helping Maggie with the potatoes. At least, the kitchen was always warm—a species of thick concentrated warmth; whereas the arc of heat spread by the dining-room fire was slashed across and across by evil currents of cold air, entering by who knows what mysterious loopholes of Pacific Villa. Huddled in her enormous grey shawl, Kathleen looked as if removed by years from the radiant creature in the brown picture-hat, of five weeks before. She had never heard again from Napier.... But the newspapers had informed her who had won the International Automobile Cup Race.... She had never had any doubt of it. Sometimes she wondered if any of his pleasure in the achievement had been marred by lack of her as audience; and whether he would attempt to communicate with her on his return....
He did not.
Reluctantly quitting Spain, Napier had fortified regret by buoyant self-assurance that things would be "all right" with Grace, now he was coming back to her in a dazzle of glory. The Cup was bound to make all the difference.... She could not but welcome him in the proper spirit of femininity towards victory. "That was a narrow shave I had!" contemplating the momentary folly which had caused him to invite Kathleen to go with him; and his subsequent relief when at the eleventh hour she had inexplicably failed to turn up.
"She'd have been an awful nuisance...."
He intended to make Grace a present of the Cup. And pictured her delight....
"Dap cobes back to-borrow," announced old Mrs. Kirby, quite superfluously, for the fiftieth time.