IT was past eleven and they were languidly pecking at breakfast. The brick-red sun forced himself into the room, made the gorgeously upholstered settee and chairs look faded, showed the green tarnish on the great copper pots, the gray rim of dust on the delft which crowded the shelves, and the darker layer which the housemaid had left in the interstices of the elaborately carved furniture.
Pamela’s morning gown, of some clinging primrose stuff, had caught London smuts in the loose ruffles of its sleeves. She lifted her cup and the ruffles fell back, showing finger-and-thumb bruises on the white flesh. She was sallow, blotchy, her eyes muddy and swollen. Edred kept looking up from his paper and staring savagely; the weary face, all quiver and traces of heavy tears, infuriated him.
“I don’t know what is coming over you,” he broke out at last. “You have only two moods—the nagging or the maudlin.”
“Edred! I—I thought you’d say you were sorry for last night. Look!”
She held up her bare arm accusingly.
“Sorry!” His frank look of amazement was absolutely genuine. “What have I to be sorry about?”
“Look!”
The white arm, with the ugly purple marks, quivered before his eyes.
“Pooh! you bruise with a touch. It’s nothing.”
“The things you said——”