"I would, indeed, my dear," said she.
X
Allan Harrington lay in his old attitude on his couch in the darkened day-room, his tired, clear-cut face a little thrown back, eyes half-closed. He was not thinking of anything or any one especially; merely wrapped in a web of the dragging, empty, gray half-thoughts of weariness in general that had hung about him so many years. Wallis was not there. Wallis had been with him much less lately, and he had scarcely seen Phyllis for a fortnight; or, for the matter of that, the dog, or any one at all. Something was going on, he supposed, but he scarcely troubled himself to wonder what. The girl was doubtless making herself boudoirs or something of the sort in a new part of the house. He closed his eyes entirely, there in the dusky room, and let the web of dreary, gray, formless thought wrap him again.
Phyllis's gay, sweetly carrying voice rang from outside the door:
"The three-thirty, then, Wallis, and I feel as if I were going to steal Charlie Ross! Well——"
On the last word she broke off and pushed the sitting-room door softly open and slid in. She walked in a pussy-cat fashion which would have suggested to any one watching her a dark burden on her conscience.
She crossed straight to the couch, looked around for the chair that should have been by it but wasn't, and sat absently down on the floor. She liked floors.
"Allan!" she said.
No answer.