"What did you think about, Mother?" Spencer's face lighted with quick curiosity.
"Some about you, Spencer, and some about Marian and Letty, and some about Daddy, and mostly about—me." Catherine was serving the salad. She had deft, slim hands with long fingers, and her movements were slow and beautifully exact.
"What about us?" asked Marian.
"I have to think some more, first." Catherine looked up at Charles. "A lot more."
II
The house was a gray mass in the evening, with one pale yellow window where the kitchen lamp shone. Catherine lay motionless in the wicker lounge on the low front veranda. Amelia had gone home. Spencer and Marian were asleep. Charles had gone to the village store for tobacco. Down below the house the smoke and heat mist veiled the transparency of the sea. So still was the night that Catherine heard the faint "mrrr" of wings of a huge gray moth that flew against her cheek and then away.
"Queer," she thought. "If the house were empty, it would have many sounds, rustles and squeaks and stirrings. But because children sleep there, it is quiet. As if the old ghosts and spirits stood on tiptoe, peeking at the intruders."
She stretched lazily, and relaxed again. The loudest sound in the night was her own soft breathing. Then, faintly, the gravel in the path slipped. Charles was coming back.
Catherine dropped her feet over the edge of the couch and clasped her arms about her knees. When he comes, she thought, I will tell him. If I go on thinking in the dark, I'll fly to bits.
She could see him, darker than the bushes, moving toward her. Then she could smell his pipe.