Prudence looked pale and very charming in a white suit that fitted as her clothes always fitted. Lawrence once told her, with a suspicion of bitterness in his tone, that if she were to be led out to execution she would not pray, she would only ask if her gown were becoming, and was her hair right?
"Where do you want to go?" he inquired.
"I don't care."
"That means you do care."
He reached forward, and knocked the ash from his cigar against a stone. To-day his face was almost colorless, and his eyes were hard; and the dreadful thing about his eyes was that when they were turned upon his wife they did not change.
As for Prudence, she would have said that her heart was like lead. She dared not soften her voice when she addressed her husband, lest he might turn savagely upon her, though his manner now was as gentle and cold as a flake of snow. She glanced at him shyly, and was inwardly irritated that she should feel timid. She did not wish to be afraid of anything. One is not comfortable when one is afraid. And she was admiring him also; and she wished to tell him of that admiration, and hang upon him, and smile, and caress him.
"No," she said, at last, in response to his words; "it means exactly what I say."
"Since when have you meant what you say?"
He turned his cool, veiled eyes upon her, scanning her interrogatively.
She plucked up courage, and replied, lightly: