Sylvia did not look at Henry. She still gazed straight ahead, with that expression of awful self-review. The thought crossed Henry's mind that she was more like some terrible doll with a mechanical speech than a living woman. He went up to her and took her hands. They were lying stiffly on her lap, in the midst of soft white cambric and lace—some bridal lingerie which she was making for Rose. “Look here, Sylvia,” said Henry, “you don't mean that you are fretting about—what you told me?”
“No,” said Sylvia, in her strange voice.
“Then what—?”
Sylvia shook off his hands and rose to her feet. Her scissors dropped with a thud. She kept the fluffy white mass over her arm. Henry picked up the scissors. “Here are your scissors,” said he.
Sylvia paid no attention. She was looking at him with stern, angry eyes.
“What I have to bear I have to bear,” said she. “It is nothing whatever to you. It is nothing whatever to any of you. I want to be let alone. If you don't like to see my face, don't look at it. None of you have any call to look at it. I am doing what I think is right, and I want to be let alone.”
She went out of the room, leaving Henry standing with her scissors in his hand.
After supper that night he could not bear to remain with Sylvia, sewing steadily upon Rose's wedding finery, and still wearing that terrible look on her face. Rose and Horace were in the parlor. Henry went down to Sidney Meeks's for comfort.
“Something is on my wife's mind,” he told Sidney, when the two men were alone in the pleasant, untidy room.
“Do you think she feels badly about the love-affair?”