"Come," he went on more easily, "aren't you glad to see me?"
"I—God knows whether I am or not. Something has happened to you—to me.... You've been through something terrible—since yesterday—something that has burnt the soul of you. What is it? What is it? The touch of your fingers—your voice, they come from a distance-like, with nothing of you in them. Am I ill that I should be thinking of you so? Take me in your arms, Harry, and shield me from this terror that you're not yourself, but some one else."
He obeyed, putting his arms around her and holding her close to him. But at the touch of his lips to hers, she struggled free and faced him by the hearth, pale as death. The look of bewilderment at her brows had intensified into a steady gaze, almost of terror at the thought that had suddenly mastered her. And yet she did not dare give utterance to it. It was so outlandish, so mad and incomprehensible.
She saw the frown of anger, quickly masked in a smile of patience as she broke away from him, and that confirmed her in her madness. She was reading him keenly now from top to toe, missing nothing. And the thought that dominated her was that the man with whom she had mated during the past weeks, the man who had passed through the shadow of death, reborn in body and spirit, the Harry that she had recently learned to love—was dead; and that this man who had come to take his place—this man—was what he might have been if God's grace had not fallen on him. Madness? Perhaps. And yet how otherwise would the touch of his lips, which last night she had sought in tenderness, have been so repellent to her? Harry—her husband—unregenerate—the same Harry that....
She kept her gaze fixed upon him and she saw his look flicker and fade.
If this reality was Harry, her husband, then were all the weeks that had passed since she found him in the hospital merely a dream, was yesterday a dream—last night?
"I—I don't know—what is the matter," she said at last, passing a hand across her brows. "I—I am not well, perhaps. But you—you're not the—not the same. I know it. The thoughts that I have of you frighten me."
He forced a laugh and sank into his chair again, lighting a cigarette with an assumption of ease.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly.
She only stood staring at him, her deep blue eyes never wavering from his face, which was still averted from the light. He met that gaze once—a second time, and then looked away, but still they stared at him, wide like a child's, but full of a dawning wisdom.