"That's the last," she said quietly, indicating the manuscript. "I finished up this evening," she added, superfluously yet without any evidence of consciousness.
"Thank you. I'm glad to get it." Ransacking his pockets, Matthias found money, and paid her for the week.
"I suppose that'll be all?" she asked steadily. "I mean, you won't want any more type-writing done for a while?"
"I don't know," he said slowly. "We'll have to ... talk things over. Today has changed everything.... If you don't mind, I'll shut the door: people all the time passing through the hall...."
She shook her head slightly to indicate a mild degree of impatience with his punctiliousness about that blessed door. Unconscious of this, having closed it, he returned to her, frowning a little as he reviewed her circumstances with a mind that seemed suddenly to have lost its customary efficiency of grasp.
He found her eyes and lost them again, glancing aside in inexplicable embarrassment.
"I'm sorry," he said slowly, looking down at the manuscript she had just delivered, and abstractedly disarranging it with thin, long fingers—"awfully sorry about the way things have turned out. I—"
She interrupted him sharply: "O no, you're not!"
He looked up quickly, amazed and disconcerted by the hint of anger in her tone. A little tremor ran through her body and she lifted her chin a trace higher while she met his stare with eyes hot and shining. Red spots like signals blazed in her either cheek.
Confused, he stammered: "I beg your pardon—!"