"No, you didn't," she told him curtly. "You said you thought her pretty. Thought her pretty, indeed, with that hair and that wonderful Scotch little face!..."
She caught her breath in irritation at the expression on his face, the uneasy movement from side to side of his eyes which warred with the smile on his lips. Why, when he thought of his love, need he have an air as if he listened to two voices and was distressed by the effort to follow their diverse musics? But she could not quarrel with him for long, for he was wearing the drenched and glittering look which was given him by triumph or hard physical exercise and which always overcame her heart like the advance of an army. His flesh and hair seemed to reflect the light as if they were wet, but neither with sweat nor with water. Rather was it as if he were newly risen from a brave dive into some pool of vitality whose whereabouts were the secret that made his mouth vigilant. Even he had the dazed, victorious look of a risen diver. Utterly melted, she cried out, "I am so glad you have come home."
He started, and came smiling out of his dream. "I am so glad to be here," he said. They laughed across the table; the strong light showed them the dear lines they knew on one another's faces. "That's why," he cried brilliantly, "I've come at this ungodly hour. I had to be here. I got into London at nine o'clock and I went and had some dinner at the Station Hotel. But I felt wretched. Mother, I'm getting," he announced with a naïve triumph, "awfully domestic. I got the hump the minute Ellen left Edinburgh. I felt I must come down to you at once, so I went and got the cycle and started off straight away, and I would have been here by midnight if I hadn't had a smash at Upminster. No, I wasn't hurt. Not a scrap. It was at the beginning of that garden suburb. God, it must be beastly living in those new houses; like beginning to colour a pipe. I'm glad we live in this old place. Well, a chap who'd bought some timber at an auction down in Surrey, and was taking it home to Laindon, dropped a log off his lorry, and I smashed into it and burst a tyre and broke half a dozen spokes in my front wheel, so I had to hunt round till I found a garage, and when I did I had to spend hours tinkering the machine up. The man who owned the place came down in his pyjamas and a dressing-gown and sat talking about his wife. She hadn't wanted to let him come down because it was so late. 'Is that a woman who'll help a man in his business, I ask you?' he kept on saying. Mustn't it be queer to have womenfolk with whom one doesn't feel identical?" They exchanged a boastful look of happiness, the intensity of which, however, seemed the last effort he found possible. For his lids drooped, and he supported his head on his hand and took a deep drink, and said drowsily, "I'm glad to be here."
She went and stood beside him and stroked his hair. "I should have come to you at Aberfay," she grieved. "But I knew I couldn't stand the winter, and I would only have been a nuisance to you if I had been ill all the time. Did the woman feed you properly, dear?"
He said, without looking up, "I wouldn't have let you come. It was a God-forsaken hole. I couldn't have stood it if it hadn't been for"—he gave it out with an odd hesitancy, almost as if he were boyishly shy—"Ellen. And I had to stand it, so that I could pull this thing off."
She asked, "What thing, my dear?" though she was not so very greatly interested. By daylight her ambition for him was fanatic and without limit. But in this stolen hour, when no one knew that they were together, she let herself feel something like levity about his doings. It seemed enough, considering how glorious he was, that he should merely be.
He began to eat again and told the story tersely between mouthfuls. "You know the reason that I stayed up in Edinburgh after I'd sent off Ellen was that I thought I had to show the directors what I'd been doing at Aberfay next Thursday. They were to come on to me after they'd paid their visit to the Clyde works. Well, they came yesterday instead. Sir Vincent has to go to America sooner than he expected, so he wanted to get it over. When they saw what I'd been trying for during the last six months they got excited. As a matter of fact it is pretty good. I wish I could tell you about it, but you know I can't. Also I had told McDermott that Dynevors, the Birmingham people, had heard my contract was up in March, and wanted to buy me. So they got frightened, and offered me a new contract that they thought would keep me." He had finished his meal, and he pushed away his plate and stretched himself, looking up at her and smiling sleepily.
"Have you taken it?"
"Rather. It couldn't have been better."
"What is it?"