"Anything you like." His hands closed on her shoulders. "Here, you haven't kissed me since I came home."
There were sudden wild tears under Catherine's lids, and she thought desperately, oh, not that! Not kisses as the only way—to touch, to reach each other!
"Didn't even kiss me good-by. Nice kind of wife." Charles pushed her chin up with a firm finger. "There now——"
"You didn't give me a chance." Catherine was quiet, thrusting under her rebellion. Suddenly, through her misted lashes, she saw just for a flash, an echo of that wary, investigatory glance. She swung out over a great abyss. Bill had seen him, with Miss Partridge. Nothing to that, surely, except this feeling, which was not jealousy, but fear of what he was defending himself against.
"I wanted to find you, but I didn't like to come up to the Bureau," he was saying. "So I went down to the clinic and talked over things with Stella Partridge." The brisk, matter-of-course words drew her back sharply from the abyss. "It took the edge off, not finding you here, this morning." He was threading his fingers through her hair.
"You're spoiled rotten!" Catherine could laugh at him now. He meant that for his apology, and she would let it lift her out of fear and hurt.
V
The week settled into a steady march. Flora had taken on the marketing, Miss Kelly had agreed never to leave the house until Catherine arrived, Charles was amiably preoccupied with the rush of the opening semester. It hadn't been so hard to adjust things, thought Catherine. Takes a little planning—I was too impatient.
Her work at the office was focussed on the Saturday conference. She wanted her preliminary analysis in tables and graphs clear and adequate enough to present to the men; there would be discrepancies between the apparent system and the actual practice in the state which the commissioner could point out. She hadn't time to complete the study of the normal schools; they were astonishingly numerous and varied.