But Dodo, waving a feeble handkerchief, ran hilariously up the stoop.
She returned from these excursions into her dramatic self to her nest, so to speak, languid and eager for calm. How did it happen that she did not attempt to dramatize herself with Lindaberry? Perhaps she did; but, if so, it was always as something bodiless and mystic, a sort of dipping into a religious exaltation, conceiving of herself as a ministering sister of the poor, sexless and utterly unselfish. But she never, in the long hours when she sat by his bedside, prattling gaily or reading him to sleep, set sail on the gentler seas of romance and passion. For him she had great depth of tenderness and affection, being often deliciously moved, as she was when Betty's childish body lay locked upon her heart.
When he welcomed her coming with a quick hailing motion of his hand, his face radiant with smiles, or when he listened, nodding or grave, fastening his profound eyes on her as if afraid the slightest turn of her head would escape him, he gave her a feeling of long intimacy; yet, when she spoke to him, even when she drew closest, it was always without the feeling of passion, of the realization of contact, which she always felt with Massingale.
Her idea of love was more and more something unreasoning, violent and stirring, something that upset all that had been planned, a flame that consumed the will—something that was perhaps greatest when it hung on the threshold of tragedy, madness in some form or other, sweet and bitter—bitter, in the end, as Tristan and Isolde. At this moment she could not conceive of this serenity that lay between her and Lindaberry as love; and, besides, it made her feel older, as if she were being hurried, as if something fragile and elusive were being stolen from her.
A curious thing—she sometimes had the feeling that she was married to him, that she was a wife, watching and devoted. It rather interested her to project herself thus. The feeling came to her at times strongly, when she rose to shift the pillows under his head, as Clarice had taught her, or, watching his averted eyes, hurried to moderate the glare that smote them from the windows.
Sometimes she thought of it with a sort of regret, wishing that she were not constituted as she was, that marriage were a possibility, that another had not seized on her imagination and awakened in her such fever. Here, alas! everything was too permissible; it lacked the element of danger, of the forbidden which alone could make the perfect Eden. But she felt with him a vast security, and a curious oneness of sympathies. If she were only ten years older—if she were not Dodo—
But one day an interruption from the outer world arrived to cast a stain of the matter-of-fact across the fragile fabric of this dream life. It was the first day that he had received permission to sit up in a chair, and the event had been duly celebrated with much gaiety. Lindaberry, in manly vanity, had insisted on taking ten steps alone without the humiliation of feminine support, but on the return trip had been forced to capitulate weakly. Having installed him again in bed, while Clarice had hurried off for luncheon, Dodo was bending over him, supporting his back with one arm, piling up the pillows, when the door opened and Lindaberry's brother entered, followed by Doctor Lampson.
"Hello, there, old bruiser!" he began, in a rough welcome in which a note of anxiety was trembling. "You're a nice, brotherly person! Why didn't you send me a telegram?"
All at once he stopped, perceiving that Dodo was not in nurse's dress. At the same moment she was seized with a sudden embarrassment. Doctor Lampson, in the background, equally at a loss, waited, rubbing his chin with quick nervous movements. Garry, engrossed in the joy of seeing his brother, did not at once perceive the situation.
"By the Lord Harry, Jock, glad to see you! I'm not all in yet, am I? Sat up—walked—" A little movement of Dodo's, stiffening and withdrawing, caught his eye, and recalled him to the necessity of an explanation. He hesitated only a moment, a little unprepared, but that momentary delay hurt her with a sudden swift pain.