She smiled, raising her chin in the distant gesture that was their signal of withdrawal.
But Steven did not go.
* * * * *
"May I come in?" he said.
Something in her said, "Don't let him come in." But she did not heed it. The voice was thin and small and utterly insignificant, as if one little brain cell had waked up and started speaking on its own account. And something seized on her tongue and made it say "Yes," and the full tide of her blood surged into her throat and choked it, and neither the one voice nor the other seemed to be her own.
He followed her into the little dining-room where the lamp was. The
Vicar was in bed. The whole house was still.
Rowcliffe looked at her in the lamplight.
"We've walked a bit too far," he said.
He made her lean back on the couch. He put a pillow at her head and a footstool at her feet.
"Just rest," he said, and she rested.