“I think so. I am getting a good many letters, one way and another. I suppose, now I'm back in harness, I'll stay. My old place is closed. I'd go back there—they want me. But it seems so futile, Christine, to leave as I did, because I felt that I had no right to go on as things were; and now to crawl back on the strength of having had my hand forced, and to take up things again, not knowing that I've a bit more right to do it than when I left!”
“I went to see Max yesterday. You know what he thinks about all that.”
He took an uneasy turn up and down the balcony.
“But who?” he demanded. “Who would do such a thing? I tell you, Christine, it isn't possible.”
She did not pursue the subject. Her thoughts had flown ahead to the little house without K., to days without his steps on the stairs or the heavy creak of his big chair overhead as he dropped into it.
But perhaps it would be better if he went. She had her own life to live. She had no expectation of happiness, but, somehow or other, she must build on the shaky foundation of her marriage a house of life, with resignation serving for content, perhaps with fear lurking always. That she knew. But with no active misery. Misery implied affection, and her love for Palmer was quite dead.
“Sidney will be here this afternoon.”
“Good.” His tone was non-committal.
“Has it occurred to you, K., that Sidney is not very happy?”
He stopped in front of her.