Suddenly he realized what he held. He stopped in his walk and put the letter on the table. He smoothed it out tenderly, as if it had been some living thing he had injured. He folded it and put it in his pocket-book. And once more he began his walk.
The whole place seemed full of her presence. Everything reminded him of her, the chair in which she sat, the glass at which she had been wont to arrange her hat when she was sitting for him, the vases on a bookshelf, for which she insisted that he should buy flowers. There were flowers in them to-day, real crimson roses—General Jacqueminot, with its sweet old-fashioned scent. For the future they would remain empty. It would be useless to buy flowers if she was not to see them. It seemed to him as if his whole life he had been doing everything for her, and that now nothing would seem worth while. He caught at his underlip with his teeth, biting it hard. It seemed as if he were being asked to bear more than human strength could endure. Then all at once he stopped in his walk, for the hoot of a taxi near at hand struck on his ears.
A moment later he heard a light step crossing the courtyard. The door opened. She was in the doorway—radiant, living.
“Paul.”
“My beloved.”
She was in his arms. He was holding her as if he would never let her go.
Love, so say the chroniclers—and wrongly—is blind. It is keen-sighted as an eagle, which from afar discerns objects invisible to the sight of man.
When Paul at last held Sara away from him, she looked into his eyes, and though he had hidden his sorrow deep down in his heart she saw suddenly into the depths, and her own heart momentarily stood still. But also with her love and her quick woman’s instinct she saw that it was something he wished to keep hidden, and so she did not ask him then what it was he was hiding from her, but smiled at him, and in her turn hid what she had guessed.
So throughout the evening the two played a game of pretence, she knowing that they both were playing it, and he—man-like—believing that he was the sole performer.