Now there was something which was not grey. Stanor’s face flushed a painful red; he looked at his cup, at the floor, in the fire, at anything but in Pixie’s face. His voice was hard with repressed embarrassment.
“Er—just so; you would, of course! There was work on hand. I waited to see it through. When a man has spent two years in the same place so many claims arise, in social life as well as in work. It is difficult for him to break away at a moment’s notice. He is hardly his own master.”
“I’m sure it is. And when there was work you were quite right to stay on. It would have been wrong to have left it unfinished.”
Stanor, looked up sharply, met clear, honest eyes, which looked back into his without a trace of sarcasm. She meant it! Voice and look alike were transparently genuine. At that moment she was essentially the Pixie of old, the Pixie to whom it came naturally to believe the best. The flush on Stanor’s cheeks deepened as he realised the nature of the “work” which had made his excuse. His voice deepened with the first real note of intimacy.
“That’s like you, Pixie! You always understood. ... And now tell me about yourself. What’s happened to you since I heard last? Six months ago, was it? No! barely four. Didn’t you write for Christmas? Been jogging along as usual at home, playing games with the babies?”
“Yes; just jogging,” said Pixie. Then of a sudden her eyes flashed. “‘Over here’ we don’t find the ‘best of life’ in a rush! It comes to some of us quite satisfactorily in a jog! ‘I guess,’ as you say, that my life as been as much ‘worth while’ as if I’d spent it in a round of pink luncheons and green teas, as your American friends seem to do.”
The unexpected happened, and, instead of protesting, Stanor sighed, and looked of a sudden grave and depressed.
“You’re right there, Pixie; that’s so, if you are built the right way! But some of us—” He checked himself, and began afresh in a voice of enforced enthusiasm. “Well!—and then you came up here to nurse your brother, and found the Runkle already in possession. I was surprised to read about that in your letter at Liverpool. Odd, isn’t it, how things come about? And how is the old fellow?”
Again Pixie’s eyes sent out a flash. How was it that every fresh thing that Stanor said seemed to hurt her in a new place?
“Considering his great years and infirmities, the old fellow seems surprisingly well.”