Chapter X. ON THE STAIRS
I was roused by someone walking across the roof, the cracking of tin under feet, and a comfortable and companionable odor of tobacco. I moved a very little, and then I saw that it was a man—the height and erectness told me which man. And just at that instant he saw me.
“Good Lord!” he ejaculated, and throwing his cigar away he came across quickly. “Why, Mrs. Wilson, what in the world are you doing here? I thought—they said—”
“That I was sulking again?” I finished disagreeably. “Perhaps I am. In fact, I’m quite sure of it.”
“You are not,” he said severely. “You have been asleep in a February night, in the open air, with less clothing on than I wear in the tropics.”
I had got up by this time, refusing his help, and because my feet were numb, I sat down on the parapet for a moment. Oh, I knew what I looked like—one of those “Valley-of-the-Nile-After-a-Flood” pictures.
“There is one thing about you that is comforting,” I sniffed. “You said precisely the same thing to me at three o’clock this morning. You never startle me by saying anything unexpected.”
He took a step toward me, and even in the dusk I could see that he was looking down at me oddly. All my bravado faded away and there was a queerish ringing in my ears.
“I would like to!” he said tensely. “I would like, this minute—I’m a fool, Mrs. Wilson,” he finished miserably. “I ought to be drawn and quartered, but when I see you like this I—I get crazy. If you say the word, I’ll—I’ll go down and—” He clenched his fist.
It was reprehensible, of course; he saw that in an instant, for he shut his teeth over something that sounded very fierce, and strode away from me, to stand looking out over the river, with his hands thrust in his pockets. Of course the thing I should have done was to ignore what he had said altogether, but he was so uncomfortable, so chastened, that, feline, feminine, whatever the instinct is, I could not let him go. I had been so wretched myself.