Sue bade Tessa good night holding both her hands. “I wish I had married Stacey,” she whispered.
“Don’t tell Dr. Lake, I beg of you.”
“Oh, he knows it. Come and see me.”
“No, I will not. You shall not talk to me about your husband.”
“I will if I want to. You must come.”
“Do come,” urged Dr. Lake coming towards them. But she would not promise.
The last Saturday evening in October found Tessa alone before the fire in Mrs. Towne’s sitting-room; Mrs. Towne was not well, and had sent for her to come; she had gone to her sleeping room immediately after tea, and asked Tessa to come to her in two hours.
She was in a “mood”; so she called it to herself, a mood in which self-analysis held the prominent place; her heart was aching, she knew not for what, she hardly cared, if the aching might be taken away and she could go to sleep and then awake to find the sun shining.
For the last hour she had been curled up in a crimson velvet chair, part of the time with her head bowed upon the arm; there were tears on her eyelashes, on her fingers, and on the crimson velvet. In the low light, she was but a gray figure crowned with chestnut braids, and only that Ralph Towne saw when he entered noiselessly through the half open door.
Tessa thought that no one in the world moved so gently or touched her so lightly as Ralph Towne. He stood an instant beside her before she stirred, then she raised her head slowly, ashamed of her flushed, wet cheeks. She could not hide from the moon.