XXII
THEY made no friends on the boat as they had made none in the train. It had rested her to leave all social relations behind as the train moved west, and she showed a strange reluctance to forming new ties. She seemed to have swung free from the past.... Richard, as he watched her, had a sense that she gathered herself for something she was journeying to meet.... Her face against the steamer-chair seemed to absorb light. It held a still look—as if it waited some signal.
But if Eleanor More, lying in her chair, made no acquaintances on the boat, and if the groups of Chinamen did not seem to observe her as they passed, there were others on the boat who showed open interest in the quiet figure that lay day after day looking under lowered lids to the west.
More than one woman slowed her pace as she came near the steamer-chair. Sometimes they lingered a moment ready to enter into conversation. But it was always Richard More who spoke to them, and after a minute’s courteous talk walked on with them, leaving the steamer-chair to its unbroken quiet.
His care for his wife, his almost reverent watchfulness for the figure in the chair, gave it a place apart, an aloofness that no one broke in upon.
Yet often they saw her, from a distance, laughing and talking with her husband like a child. There was something unwarranted in the sweetness and freshness of her laugh.... It seemed to have left care behind, and yet to be filled with sympathy that sprang from a deep place.
A woman with little fine lines in her face and a quick mobile mouth looked at her companion and smiled, as the laugh came to them.
They had been standing by the boat-rail, looking out to sea, silent for a long time.
He returned the smile. “Well?”