“No answer!” he said, laconically.
At the brusqueness of his voice, Eve looked up. “Disagreeable news?” she said, as the servant departed.
He didn't look at her. He was watching the telegram withering in the centre of the fire.
“No,” he said at last, in a strained voice. “No. Only news that I—that I had forgotten to expect.”
XI
There was a silence—an uneasy break—after Loder spoke. The episode of the telegram was, to all appearances, ordinary enough, calling forth Eve's question and his own reply as a natural sequence; yet in the pause that followed it each was conscious of a jar, each was aware that in some subtle way the thread of sympathy had been dropped, though to one the cause was inexplicable and to the other only too plain.
Loder watched the ghost of his message grow whiter and thinner, then dissolve into airy fragments and flutter up the chimney. As the last morsel wavered out of sight, he turned and looked at his companion.
“You almost made me commit myself,” he said. In the desire to hide his feelings his tone was short.
Eve returned his glance with a quiet regard, but he scarcely saw it. He had a stupefied sense of disaster; a feeling of bitter self-commiseration that for the moment outweighed all other considerations. Almost at the moment of justification the good of life had crumbled in his fingers, the soil given beneath his feet, and with an absence of logic, a lack of justice unusual in him, he let resentment against Chilcote sweep suddenly over his mind.