"I wasn't talking of that," he said drearily. "I was talking of you. You're getting old, for a woman, Clarice, and when you're worried, as you are to-day, you show it; though how an imbecile like Hartley got at you to the extent of making you worried, I don't pretend to guess."
"Old," she said angrily. "You aren't troubling to be particularly polite."
"No, I'm damnably truthful; just because it makes me wonder at you all the more. You can go on smiling at any number of idiots, because you must have the applause, I suppose. You don't even believe in it—now."
His allusion was definite, and Mrs. Wilder felt about in her mind for some way to change the conversation. Quagmires are bad ground for walking, and she was in a hurry to reach terra firma again. She came round the table and slipped her arm through his.
"After all these years. Draycott—be a little generous."
If she had fought him, some deep, hidden anger in his cold heart would have flared up, but her gesture softened him and he patted her hand.
"I know," he said slowly. "Only I can't quite forget. I simply can't, Clarice."
She smiled at him and touched his face with a light hand.
"Shall I tell you why? Because even if I am old—and thirty-six isn't so very dreadful—you are still in love with me."
She went with him to the door and smiled as he drove away, smiled and waved as he reappeared round a distant bend, and watched him return her signal, and then she went back into the large drawing-room and her face grew grey and pinched, and she sat with her chin propped on her hands, thinking.