"Just beyond you," and the boy slipped away to his pets, grudging the time for her kiss in passing.
She stood softly behind the wicker chair and laid her hand on his forehead. Her lips were only a little smoother.
"Still troubled, dearest?" she asked him in her pleasant voice. "Still dreaming?"
She was very dark, with reddish lights in her thick, low-growing hair, and brown, broad eyebrows. Under them her eyes shone, a frank, dark brown; she bore a curious likeness to that nurse he had seen in the doctor's office, so many years ago. How strange that a passing fate should have set his ideal of dear and loving women forever! She had even the same small dimple at the left of her mouth.
She slipped to the floor beside him and laid her head in her wifely way against his knee.
"I'm so sorry it bothers you, Phil," she murmured, her cheek against his hand. "One would think you were a superstitious boy, you silly! Hear baby—he's playing so dearly with those puppies! He pats them and then pinches their tails so slyly! Oh, Ted! Oh, baby! Call to mummy!"
From the balcony above a shrill crow drowned the complaint of the puppies.
"Doesn't he say it plainly!" she cried, flushing a beautiful mother-rose. "And he is so strong, Phil!"
He caressed her absently. Ten years gone, and a dream had swept those years to one side as one would draw a bronze curtain, had opened the past as one would open a heavy mahogany door! All night a tall, carved clock had ticked, ticked through his dreams, one, two! one, two! one, two! A sinister, sandy face had mocked and probed him, a fat, animal face had irritated him, a pale, haunted face had pleaded with him. He had tossed himself awake, had listened thankfully to the soft breathing beside him, had kissed the fragrant braid across his face, and sunk again into heavy, sultry nightmare, doomed to live that shameful day through every clock-tick. And now his brain was cloudy with it. His hand lay listless on her shoulder.
A five-year-old girl, lovely as a tea rose, stood doubtfully in the cedar-wood door, poised for flight either way, sucking in the dimple at the left of her mouth. Running at his call she flew into his arms and dropped her buttercup head on his shoulder. For the first time he smiled, and the wise wife slipped quietly away and watched them from the door, guessing at their murmurs, counting their kisses. Later she disturbed them reluctantly.