“Close your eyes if the light wearies them,” she said softly, but he strove to keep them open to catch glimpses of her regal face, between the passages of the hands, so calm in the tensity of its expression. After a little while his eyelids began to weigh heavily upon his eyes.
The grey—or was it green?—orbs watching him flashed between the moving fingers like the sun through bars of ivory. He still watched their gleam intently; seen fitfully thus their radiance grew brighter, brighter, till it blasted vision.
“Close your eyes,” he heard a voice say, as from far, far away.
“You will be tired,” he muttered, stirring, but his eyes closed. His head fell back against the back of the chair, and strong Vashti Lansing sank back also, pale and trembling.
“Oh!” she said, speaking numbly to herself—“Oh! how long it was. I thought he would never sleep—I,” she paused and looked at the sleeping man with pale wrath upon her face; “to think he should have resisted so—I”—she leaned back, worn out, it seemed, and regarded Sidney with venomous, half-closed eyes, and he slept, and sleeping, smiled—for his last thoughts had been of her.
The time which had seemed so long to Vashti had passed like the dream of a moment to him—a dream in which her form had filled the stage of his mind, yet not so completely as to exclude some struggles of the entrapped intelligence against the narcotic of her waving hands. The trained mind by mere mechanical instinct had striven against the encroaching numbness, but Sidney’s volition had been consciously passive, and the intelligence left to struggle alone was tangled in the web of dreams. Vashti sat listlessly upon the step for some time—like a sleek, beautiful cat watching a mouse. Then she rose and went within doors to perform her share of the household duties very languidly.
The three women dined alone at twelve o’clock, for Mr. Lansing had not returned, and Sidney still slept. After dinner Vashti disappeared, going to her room and throwing herself heavily upon her old-fashioned couch; she also slept.
Active Temperance fell to her patchwork so soon as her dinner dishes were done, sitting, a comfortable, homely figure, in her calico dress and white apron. Now pursing her lips as she pleated in the seams firmly between her finger and thumb; now relaxing into grim smiles at her thoughts, but always doing with all her might the task in hand.
Mabella essayed her crochet, tried to read, rearranged her hair till her arms ached from holding them up, and found with all these employments the afternoon insupportably long.
About three o’clock in the afternoon Vashti, cool and calm, descended the stairs and went out upon the porch. As she crossed the threshold, Sidney, lying still as she had left him hours before in the low chair, opened his eyes and looked up into her face. She returned the look—neither for a moment spoke. A sudden deep hush seemed to have fallen upon, about them. Had he awakened from his dream, or had she entered it to make the dream world real with her presence? About them was all the shadowy verdâtre of trees and vines. Sidney had forgotten where he was—all earthly circumstances faded before the great fact of her presence. He was conscious only that he was Man, and that Woman, glorified and like unto the gods for beauty, stood before him. Were they then gods together?