"I don't know. Perhaps—" He went with her to the door. "Perhaps," he said, "quite a long time."
(But if he didn't live she would have killed him. She had known all the time, and she had let him go.)
Through the dining-room window she could see Roddy as he crouched over the hearth, holding out his hands to the fire.
He was hers, not Mamma's, to take care of. Sharp, delicious pain!
VII.
"Oh, Roddy—look! Little, little grouse, making nice noises."
The nestlings went flapping and stumbling through the roots of the heather. Roddy gazed at them with his fixed and mournful eyes. He couldn't share your excitement. He drew back his shoulders, bracing himself to bear it; his lips tightened in a hard, bleak grin. He grinned at the absurdity of your supposing that he could be interested in anything any more.
Roddy's beautiful face was bleached and sharpened; the sallow, mauve-tinted skin stretched close over the bone; but below the edge of his cap you could see the fine spring of his head from his neck, like the spring of Mark's head.
They were in April now. He was getting better. He could walk up the lower slopes of Karva without panting.
"Why are we ever out?" he said. "Supposing we went home?"