Georgiana told him, unconsciously letting him see that the fear of her probable loss was ever before her, though she could not put it into words. She knew as she spoke that his eyes did not leave her face. She had no possible idea how alluring was that face as the light from the sconces nearby fell upon it. She was conscious, womanlike, that the small hat she wore was made over from one of Jeannette's, and she did not think it becoming. Though it was November, she still wore her summer suit, for the reason that since her return from abroad Jeannette had not found time to pack and send off the usual "Semi-Annual," and previous boxes had not included winter suits at at all. Altogether, with many-times-mended gloves upon her hands, and shoes which to her seemed disgraceful, though preserved with all the care of which she was mistress, Georgiana felt somehow more than ordinarily shabby.
Doctor Craig asked her several questions. He spoke of the rug-making, watching her closely as she answered. He asked how often she went to walk and how far. He asked what she and her father were reading. He would have asked other questions, but she interrupted him.
"It's not fair," she said. "Please tell me about the book. Does it get on?"
"Do you care to know?"
"Very much. I'm wondering if your copyist makes those German references any clearer for the printer than I did."
"Nobody has copied a word. I have not written a word. The book is at a complete standstill. I see no hope for it until I can take another vacation—under the name of E. C. Jefferson."
"And that you will never take," she said positively.
"I never shall—in the same way. There are reasons against it. The book will have to be written as the others were—on trains, on shipboard, in my own room late at night."
"Is it right to try to put two lifetimes into one?" she asked, and now she lifted her eyes to his.
Before, she had managed to avoid a direct meeting by those many and engaging little makeshifts girls have, of glancing at a man's shoulder, his ear, his mouth—and off at the floor, the window—anywhere not to let him see clearly what she may be afraid he will see. And Georgiana was intensely afraid that if Dr. Jefferson Craig got one straight look with those keen eyes of his he would recognize that her whole aching, throbbing heart was betraying itself from between those lifted lashes. But now, somehow, with her question she ventured to give him this one look. The interview might end at any moment; she must have one straight survey of his face, bent so near hers.