He had not looked at Dorothy. He had not spoken to her. He was speaking to Anthony and John and Frances who were asking questions about trains and boats and his kit and his people. He looked as if he were not conscious of Dorothy's eyes fixed on him as he sat, slowly stirring his coffee without drinking it. The vibration of her nerves made his answers sound muffled and far-off.
She knew that her hour was dwindling slowly, wasting, passing from her minute by minute as they talked. She had an intolerable longing to be alone with him, to be taken in his arms; to feel what she had felt yesterday. It was as if her soul stood still there, in yesterday, and refused to move on into to-day.
Yet she was glad of their talking. It put off the end. When they stopped talking and got up and left her alone with him, that would be the end.
Suddenly he looked straight at her. His hands trembled. The cup he had not drunk from rattled in its saucer. It seemed to Dorothea that for a moment the whole room was hushed to listen to that small sound. She saw her mother take the cup from him and set it on the table.
One by one they got up, and slunk out of the room, as if they were guilty, and left her alone with him.
It was not like yesterday. He did not take her in his arms. He sat there, looking at her rather anxiously, keeping his distance. He seemed to be wondering how she was going to take it.
He thought: "I've made a mess of it again. It wasn't fair to make her want me--when I might have known. I ought to have left it."
And suddenly her soul swung round, released from yesterday.
She knew what he had wanted yesterday: that her senses should be ready to follow where her heart led. But that was not the readiness he required from her to-day; rather it was what his anxious eyes implored her to put away from her.
There was something more.