"Anything more I can do for you, Miss?"
It was the Irish girl who came to clean. She stood in the shadow by the door with her hand at her sides. Pretty smiling lips.
"No, nothing tonight, Marion. I'm sorry I kept you so late today."
"That's all right. Good night, Miss."
Nan smiled warmly at her through the dusk of the room. At the end of the hall the door shut sharply.
"More tea, Fanshaw?"
"No, thanks."
While she poured a few drops of tea into her cup she glanced out the window again. Italians they were, probably, smelling of pipes and sweaty shirts and garlic. There's Marion. If I were Marion Reily instead of Nancibel Taylor ... to stroll along twilit streets with backward looks through the lashes; that boy'd rub the clay off his hands and follow me; kidding talk on park benches, fumbling work-rough hands, ditchdiggers' hands, hardmuscled arms crushing, moist hot lips bearing down, panting. The cold voice of Aunt M. when she was a little girl too excited at the circus: Careful, Nancibel, careful, Nancibel.
"But, Fanshaw," she was saying, straining to keep the tumult out of her voice, "suppose there were a life after death."
Fanshaw did not answer for a moment. She saw his eyes dusky grey, troubled. The straight line of his lips tightened. All this is me, smalltalk over teacups and polished hardwood floors and Fanshaw's drawling Harvardese. Marion's neat dark figure had gone off down the street with quick jerky steps. Nan looked back into the darkening room.