“It is a popular place, isn’t it?”
She was smoothing the edges of the patch thoughtfully; there was a little smile on her lip.
He folded his paper. “I’m going to bed,” he announced.
She glanced quickly at the clock and resumed her work. “I must finish this. He hasn’t any other to wear.” The needle went in and out.
Eldridge rose and stretched himself above her. He looked down at her—at the swift-moving hands and grey closeness of her dress. He would like to take her in his hands and crush out of her the thoughts—make her speak out the thoughts that followed the swift-going needle; he did not know that he wanted this—he was only feeling over and over, in some deep, angry place—“What the devil was she doing there? What the——”
He moved about the room a minute and ’went out. The woman by the table sewed on. A bolt shot in the front hall and Eldridge’s feet mounted the stairs slowly. Then the room was quiet—only the clock and the needle.
Presently the needle stopped—the woman’s hands lay folded in her lap. The figure was motionless, the head bent—only across her face moved the little smile.... The clock travelled round and whirred its warning note and struck, and she only stirred a little, as if a breath escaped her, and took up her work, looking at it blindly.
A sound came in the hall and she looked up.
He stood in the doorway, his old dressing-gown wrapped around him, his hands gaunt, with the little hairs at the wrist uncovered by cuffs.
She looked at him, smiling absently. There was something almost beautiful in her face as she lifted it to him—“When are you coming to bed?” he asked harshly.