Ah, that was not sharp; it was something better. There was, after all, about his Beaver a certain poetry and tenderness.
She picked up the little wooden horse, and held it in her hands, and adjusted its loosened mane, and mended its broken legs, fitting the edges delicately with her clever fingers. And it seemed to him that as she bent over the toy her face grew soft again. When she lifted her head her eyes rested on him, but without seeing him. Never had Flossie had so poignant a vision of Muriel Maud.
He looked at her with a new wonder in his heart. For the first time he was made aware of the change that two years had worked in her. She had grown, he thought, finer in growing firmer; her body in its maturity was acquiring a strength and richness that had been wanting in its youth; as if through that time of waiting it were being fashioned for the end it waited for. But that was not all. She had clothed herself unconsciously with poetry. She stood for a moment transfigured before him; a woman with sweet eyes beholding her desired destiny from far. Her soul (for a moment) rose in her face like a star—a dim prophetic star that trembled between darkness and dawn. He knew that she saw herself now as the possible mother of his children.
The anger and the jealousy were over; and all of a sudden she gave in.
"You can have the house, if you like, Keith."
"All right; I do like it. That's a dear little Beaver."
As he approached her her glance fled. "I didn't say you could have the room. I want to keep it empty."
He put his arm round her and led her to the window. "What do you want to keep it empty for, Flossie?"
Her poor little thoughts, surprised and dismayed, went scurrying hither and thither, trying to hide their trail.
"Oh," she said, still looking away from him. "To store things in." He drew her closer to him and kissed her tenderly.