He turned to the silent, motionless woman who sat by without so much as the natural feminine rustle of garments.
Anne looked at him through the white light of her clear eyes, but she did not speak. She had been well called a "still-tongued woman."
The doctor, glancing away, went on uneasily, yet determinedly:—
"But I am not sure what Tom would like. I don't think he cares for backgammon or checkers or dominoes or any of those milk-and-water games. You don't know anything about chess, do you, Tom?" he asked.
The stricken man made no reply; he could utter but few words and those only with indistinctness and difficulty. He did not even turn his head; the turning of it ever so slowly was hard and caused him great pain.
"I scarcely think chess would be the thing anyway—it's too heavy and requires too much thinking to be good for an invalid. You must have something light and amusing. That's the sort of game we must give you to keep you from moping."
The doctor spoke to the husband, but his eyes were on the wife and regarding her anxiously, though his lips were smiling.
There was no responsive smile on Anne's pale face. It was quite still and grave as it always was, but a thin cloud of alarm seemed suddenly rising in her clear gaze, as white smoke floats over the crystalline sky of a winter's day. But yet she said not a word.
The doctor also fell unexpectedly silent, with his eyes fixed sternly on the back of the sick man's chair and a frown gathering between his shaggy, grizzled brows, as it always gathered when he was sorely perplexed. He was only an old-fashioned country doctor—merely a good man first and scientist afterwards. So that he now sat speechless, casting about in his troubled thoughts for the gentlest words wherewith he must wound the quiet, pale-faced woman, whose very lack of comprehension appealed to his great heart as all helplessness did. He saw, as only doctors can see, how frail was the body holding this strenuous spirit. As he thus sat silent, gathering courage, the utter stillness of the room grew tense. The young man, sitting on the other side of the chamber, silent and ill at ease, moved uneasily, keeping his eyes on the floor. The soft, monotonous murmur of the bees in the honeysuckle over the window sounded unnaturally loud and shrill.
At last the doctor spoke distinctly and firmly, but without looking at Anne:—