Her brooding calm spurred him in that sensitive spot whose throb or ache tells a man whether he is centre of a woman's mind or not. He must know whether she was glad to have him back; the wanderer returned, eh? She had not told him so yet, he must observe; no, nor looked it. She was mysterious, it seemed to him. “And you can speak with your eyes, my dear; none better. Your tongue was never very loose; but your eyes! Now, you know what you can do with them, Sancie; you know very well. Speak to me, then, my dear, speak to me. Speak to me only with thine ... no, not only! You can speak in a thousand ways—with your hands, with the tips of your fingers placed here or there, with a bend of the head on that lovely neck you have, with your faint colour, with your quick breath.” ...
Fired by his own words, he worked himself into enthusiasm, was enamoured of what himself proclaimed. “My beautiful—my goddess!” he called her, and drew her to his heart.
And she allowed him, allowed herself to be pressed there, while within her the dull fire smouldered, and the deep, slow resentment gathered like clouds about the sun. But he held her face now between his two hands and forced to meet his own her unresponsive eyes; and when with ardour he had kissed her grave lips, the flippancy of a fool ruined him, and his triumph was flattened into dust, as when one crushes a puff-ball.
He suddenly held her at arms' length as he was struck by an idea. “Oh, by the way, I forgot,” he said, and looked vaguely across the room. “Claire is dead.”
Sanchia's eyes concentrated and paled. The pupils of them were specks. She paled to the lips, then slowly flooded as with a tide of sanguine. She withdrew herself from him; simply dropped him off her. She said nothing; but she watched him steadily, while within her the masked fire gleamed and fitfully leapt.
Bravado made him hold on to his airy tone. “She died, I'm told, at Messina, some time in March. I heard it at Marseilles. Met a man who told me. Yes! She's dead—and buried.”
Sanchia had nothing to say. She looked, however, towards the door—and he detected that. Her silence spread about the room, caught him and enveloped him. That she was calculating how long it would be before she could escape by that door was absolutely clear, and the frost of her silence struck down upon him so that he could not gainsay her purpose. He paused irresolute, glancing askance at her directed eyes. Then he gave in, left her, opened the door for her. She went out, folded in her own mystery, but as she went by him he caught up her hand, and kissed the fingers. They were very cold, and made him shiver.
“Good-night, my dear,” he said, all his dash gone out of him.
She said good-night very simply and went away. He looked after her until she had turned the corridor, then went to the table and poured himself brandy and soda-water, drank deeply, and set down the tumbler with a crash. “By God! I am a fool,” he told himself.
From the garden that narrow chink of light which shone through Ingram's shutter was seen to collapse by one who watched it. Shortly afterwards, that same haunter of the dark saw a shining slit part the shutters of a window in the west wing, and sighed, short and quick. He returned, to prowl among the secret flowers.