“I think I wanted you so that my will called you out,” he said in an impassioned whisper.
She said nothing and suddenly his hand sought hers, clasped it tight on the head of the lion, and he whispered again,
“Oh, Rose, if I could see you now and then—only for a moment like this.”
He felt her hand, small and cold, crush softly inside his, and almost immediately was conscious of her effort to withdraw it. He instantly loosened his fingers, let hers slide from his grasp, and drew back.
“Good night,” she said hurriedly, and without looking at him turned and went up the steps.
“Good night,” he called after her, following her ascending figure with his eyes.
When she reached the shadow at the top of the steps, she called “Good-by,” passed into the engulfing blackness, and was gone. He waited till he heard the door bang behind her, then descended the steps and walked slowly home, his eyes on the pavement.
Berny was in her own room ready for bed when she heard his ascending footsteps. She was occupied in rubbing a skin-food into her face, with careful circular motions and pinchings of her finger-tips. It was a task that required deep attention and which she performed three nights in the week with conscientious regularity. With her face gleaming with grease she crept to her door and listened, heard his cane slide into the umbrella holder, and the door of his room shut with a softness which told her that he thought her asleep. She walked back to the glass and resumed her manipulations, but with diminished zeal. The clock on the bureau marked the hour at half-past ten. Dominick had been out two hours. Would a man walk round a city—even a crank like her husband—all by himself for two hours?
CHAPTER XVI
FAMILY AFFAIRS
Every summer afternoon the trade winds blow through San Francisco, winging their way across miles of chill, salt sea, and striking the bulwarked city with a boisterous impact. The long streets seem as paths, lines of least resistance, and the winds press themselves into the narrow limits and whoop buoyantly along, carrying before them dust, rags, scraps of paper—sometimes hats.