Daniel looked up, and studied the two women as if they were the figures of a hallucination: the one in dark red, the other in dark blue; minor and major keys. The two stood side by side, and yet so far removed from each other: they were the two poles of his world.
XI
“What has Benda got to say?” asked Gertrude hesitatingly.
“Just think, he is going to Africa,” replied Daniel, with a voice as if he were lying. “Curious, isn’t it? I suppose he is on the ocean by this time.”
With an expression on his face that clearly betrayed the fact that he was afraid the sisters might somehow divine or suspect the parts of the letter he wished to keep to himself, he read as much of it as he dared to them.
“Why don’t you read on?” asked Eleanore, when he paused.
She bent over the table, filled with a burning curiosity to know the whole contents of the letter, and while so doing her hair became entangled in the metal bric-a-brac of the hanging lamp. Gertrude got up and liberated her.
Daniel had laid his hand over the letter, and was looking at Eleanore threateningly. His eye and that of the captured girl chanced to meet; she struggled between a feeling of amusement and one of annoyance. It gave Daniel an uncomfortable feeling to have her eyes so close to his.
“Don’t you know that that is not polite?” he asked. “We have some secrets, probably, Benda and I.”
“I merely thought that Benda had sent me his greetings,” replied Eleanore, and blushed with embarrassment.