“Why are you stopping?” Sara's voice, shrilling a little with anxiety, came to him out of the darkness.
“I'm not stopping. I'm only slowing down a bit, because I think it's quite feeding time. Do you mind opening those two leather attachments fixed in front of you? Such nectar and ambrosia as Mrs. Judson has provided is in there.”
Sara leaned forward, and unbuckling the lid of a flattish leather case which, together with another containing a flask, was slung just opposite her, withdrew from within it a silver sandwich-box. She snapped open the lid and proffered the box to Garth.
“Help yourself. And—do you mind”—he spoke a little uncertainly and the darkness hid the expression of his face from her—“handing me my share—in pieces suitable for human consumption? This is a bad bit of road, and I want both hands for driving the car.”
In silence Sara broke the sandwiches and fed him, piece by piece, while he bent over the wheel, driving steadily onward.
The little, intimate action sent a curious thrill through her. It seemed in some way to draw them together, effacing the memory of those weeks of bitter indifference which lay behind them. Such a thing would have been grotesquely impossible of performance in the atmosphere of studied formality supplied by their estrangement, and Sara smiled a little to herself under cover of the darkness.
“One more mouthful!” she announced as she halved the last sandwich.
An instant later she felt his lips brush her fingers in a sudden, burning kiss, and she withdrew her hand as though stung.
She was tingling from head to foot, every nerve of her a-thrill, and for a moment she felt as though she hated him. He had been so kind, so friendly, so essentially the good comrade in this crisis occasioned by Molly's flight, and now he had spoilt it all—playing the lover once more when he had shown her clearly that he meant nothing by it.
Apparently he sensed her attitude—the quick withdrawal of spirit which had accompanied the more physical retreat.