Snow was falling through the skeleton trees on the Ridgeway as she approached “Claremont.” Through the window of the front room she could catch the glow of leaping flames. That indicated that he was at home. He had no relatives and no friends of the kind that would share Christmas Day with him. Besides, he was quite impervious to the Christmas type of sentimentality. Yet possibly he would be pleased to see her.
She found him sitting on the club-fender with the fire behind him. He was reading long proof-slips. As she entered he merely glanced up casually.
“Come in,” he drawled, and went on correcting until he had finished the slip.
There are no words to convey how deeply that annoyed her.
“Well,” he began, when the last marginal correction had been inserted, “and how are you getting on?”
“All right,” she asserted, with some pique. Then, in a spitefully troubled tone: “What have you been doing with yourself since you came back from Cambridge?”
He pointed to the litter of proof-slips on the floor.
“Working,” he replied.
“I half expected you’d come and see me,” she remarked tentatively.
“So did I,” he replied quietly, “but I didn’t after all....”