"I suppose it's all right," he said drearily. "I haven't thought much about it. I've been in Newport for five months, being invited to meet widows and orphans. Then I got orders to report here and Van Citters asked me down for Christmas. They told me that you and the Astrys were away for a while."
"Eva had to go in August: she broke down; but they came back in October. Johnstone has just imported a new Chinese god."
"I see that he hasn't reformed; I mean Johnstone, not the god. Has he gone in for any more new fads?"
They were forcing themselves to talk commonplaces.
"Occult science and Shintoism, I believe," she replied, still trifling with her acorn. "He has some new toy from the West Indies, but I don't know much about it; he calls it the red sphere."
"I wish I could have brought him a few odds and ends from the Philippines. I didn't—I remembered the story of Jim Fealey coming home with six church candlesticks and a mahogany sideboard as the spoils of war."
She did not answer him for a moment, she could not; and then she tried to divert his glance. "Look, isn't that view pretty? I love that bit—and see, there's a glimpse of the Astry gateposts."
They stopped midway in the woods and looked southward. There was a clearing, and in it a few gray rocks loomed out of the snow, while the hemlocks, still mantled in snow, parted to show the long curve of the meadows beyond and the stately gateway in the dark line of hedge. As they looked, a man and a woman crossed the path below them without looking up; she was weeping passionately and clinging to her companion's arm.
Rachel turned slowly away and walked on, and John dared not look at her, for they had both recognized the two below them in the wood. It was Belhaven with Eva.
Rachel walked ahead, turning her acorn over and over in her hand and looking at it curiously, unconscious that she did it. John walked behind her, blind with rage, the old primeval instinct to kill tearing at his heart. This was the man she had married, the man she had preferred to him!