She looks at one other thing—the sweet-williams in front of the window. Her expression may not change; it may be the relief that he experiences, when he knows that her eyes are not upon him, but he fancies that the gaze is less terrible, less forbidding when she looks at the flowers. For this reason, he brings her a fragrant little bunch each morning, each evening. He lays them in her lap. He never sees her touch them, but she never rejects them. She accepts them as she does everything else, in utter silence, passively.
Those brought in the morning are withered at night, and those brought at night, faded by day—but he never throws them away. They have been near her. They have touched her gown—possibly she has touched them with her hands. It is possible she has touched them with her lips—those lips he never dares kiss. At any rate he keeps the withered flowers. He puts them away, each little faded bunch, in a drawer in the strange little desk.
Sometimes he raises his head from his writing to speak. He meets her glance, and is dumb. Sometimes he thinks she must be lonely, and reads to her,—reads until the fascination of her eyes draws his glance from the pages, and he looks up with the feeling of horror and oppression that now possesses him. Sometimes he longs for the sound of her voice. Indeed, sometimes the longing becomes so intense that he clenches his hands, and the perspiration stands in great beads upon his forehead.
Sometimes he sits in the twilight, the silent figure near, and thinks of the tones of a voice long ago. He tries to recall the intonation she gave to his name, and certain phrases she used. He wonders if the tones are just right in his memory.
At these times he thinks every moment:
"Will she speak? She is about to speak now. In a moment she will speak my name." And he sits breathlessly, with his head partly turned. There is never a word, never a sound, never a motion.
He is working in his flower-bed. He puts down his trowel and hurries in, suddenly possessed with the idea—"She may feel like speaking, and I not be there." Or while he is at work among the flowers he looks up to find her looking at him.
Her dog is at her feet. She never notices him, never touches him. Braine can no longer find a trace of Helen, his wife, in this woman. He tries in vain to recall her expression.
This evening he is standing at the little gate leading to the lane. He leans on it in the sweet silence, that the birds are emphasizing. He is looking off into the far-away, his white hair touched by the setting sun.
Is it the effect of the dying light, or is his face different? His dark eyes have grown dreamy with their absent look. There is a half smile on his firm, tender lips; an expression of resignation, which is not dogged but cheerful; an expression that impels the squirrel on the rail of the fence to stay where he is, and the dog to poke his black nose into his master's hand.