“It’s pretty dreary for you here, isn’t it?” he said.
Her lips suddenly trembled and she bit the under one. For a moment her control was shaken, and to hide it she bent over the lamp, pretending to arrange the wick. The pause was heavy till she said in her usual tone:
“Well, lately it has been rather lonely. It’s hard to get used to Rosamund’s not being here.”
She crossed the room to the sofa and sat down in the corner of it, Rion taking a chair near her. As she patted her skirt into satisfactory folds, she said, her eyes fixed on her arranging hand,
“It takes a person a long time to get used to some one they care for going so far off. I sometimes wonder if they ever do.”
He looked at her, murmuring some casual response, his mind not on his words. Against the sheer white of her dress a locket she wore suspended round her neck by a narrow black velvet, caught and lost the light as her breast rose and fell. He was conscious of its regular gleam, of the darkness of her hand against the white folds of her skirt, of the slim smallness of her figure reclining in the angle of the sofa.
Another pause fell between them, this time uncomfortable with a sense of extreme constraint; June’s hand ceased moving and joined its companion in her lap. She raised her eyes timidly and met his, intent, motionless, fixed deeply upon her. The locket rose brightly into the light on a sharply caught breath.
“Why did Black Dan send the Colonel into Empire?” she faltered.
“Do you remember what I asked you more than two years ago in San Francisco?” was his answer.
She tried to temporize and said nervously,