She turned her eyes away from him, out to the garden, and did not speak. He remembered what he had said the previous day, and guessed how it must have hurt her, if she were really what he was beginning to believe.
His next words were utterly unpremeditated. "I'll buy a car and take you out myself."
"That would be safer," she replied gravely. Then she raised herself on her elbow, searched among her papers on a little table at her side, and held out a letter to him.
"Will you put that out to be posted, please?"
He limped across the room and stood quite near—near enough to take the envelope from her hand.
"You read what I said about your correspondence?"
"Yes." He thought he could detect an impulse to say "Thank you," and the determination not to yield to it. Thanks for the right to breathe! The right to be herself! He saw that she could not frame it.
The sound of the gong in the hall below was audible. He turned away—lingered, trying to put together some sentence expressive of his satisfaction that she should be on the sofa to-day, but he found the thing too difficult, and was off with a curt, "Well, good night!"
"Good night," she answered.
When he was back at the door, he turned again and looked at her. Her whole fair outline, supine upon the couch, was illumined in a rosy gilding. The room behind her lay shadowy; her own form on its dark side was blurred. But that outline against the purple misty garden without was like a thing of enchantment. So still—so very beautiful—he thought of an effigy upon a tomb. He closed the door with a hissing breath drawn between his teeth. In his hand he held the key to all his doubt—the reply to the letter he had read. When he had also read this he would know what he must do; he would be able to realise what he had already done.