"Yes," said Denis. "I've wondered, Harry: do you think there's anything in that Carth'lic idea of prayers for the dead?"
Gardiner, with those expectant dark blue eyes fixed on him in their inveterate simplicity, found himself answering: "Oh, I expect—"
"Because, you see, we didn't have much time to say things," Denis explained. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bore you with this, but it's been rather a facer for me. You know, if she'd lived, she'd have been my wife."
"Oh, my dear old Denis—!" said Gardiner.
CHAPTER XXXIV SHE ALONE CHARMETH MY SADNESS
Oh, believe me, Nell, it is an awful thing to be a wife.—Charlotte Brontë.
Lettice, dragging up the steps of No. 33 Canning Street, paused to unfasten her waterproof and shake her wet umbrella. It was raining, it seemed to have been raining ever since she got back to town, chill November rain, a yellow haze down every street; and the weather matched her mood. Ever since April she had been trying to shut her eyes to the future, but as time drew on it refused to be ignored. It lay in wait outside the Museum, it came home with her in the Tube, it took possession of her attic, it was translating itself with appalling rapidity into the present, and she was no more ready for it than she had been months ago.
Well! she had still a week's grace, and anything might happen in a week. Lettice detached her mind with an effort, picked up a letter from the hall table, and came upstairs at a snail's pace, reading it. Her own room she expected to be dark, so with her usual deaf and blind absorption in anything to read she lingered outside on the landing. She became aware, as she stood, of another scent mingling with that of the lamp, of another clearer light than its brownish obscurity, but her eyes remained glued to her letter; not till she had reached the end did she slowly raise them from the sheet, and then she saw her door open, her room full of firelight, a white cloth gleaming, a dark figure standing in the entrance watching her with a smile.