“She only expressed it by being here and by letting me look at her. That was enough!” he exclaimed with a singular laugh.
I wondered more and more. “You mean she didn’t speak to you?”
“She said nothing. She only looked at me as I looked at her.”
“And you didn’t speak either?”
He gave me again his painful smile. “I thought of you. The situation was every way delicate. I used the finest tact. But she saw she had pleased me.” He even repeated his dissonant laugh.
“She evidently pleased you!” Then I thought a moment. “How long did she stay?”
“How can I say? It seemed twenty minutes, but it was probably a good deal less.”
“Twenty minutes of silence!” I began to have my definite view and now in fact quite to clutch at it. “Do you know you’re telling me a story positively monstrous?”
He had been standing with his back to the fire; at this, with a pleading look, he came to me. “I beseech you, dearest, to take it kindly.”
I could take it kindly, and I signified as much; but I couldn’t somehow, as he rather awkwardly opened his arms, let him draw me to him. So there fell between us for an appreciable time the discomfort of a great silence.