"I thought that you had something to say to me?"
It seems as if her soul had gone out into the sun and April-painted champaign country, and that it is only with an effort and a sigh that she fetches it home again:
"So I have."
"And how much longer am I to wait for it?"
There is no indication of any capacity for patience in his tone.
She brings her look back from the shining morning city, and fixes it wistfully upon him.
"Are you in such a hurry to hear?"
The pathetic streak in her voice, instead of conciliating, chafes him. What is the sense of this paraphernalia of preliminaries? Why not come to the point at once? if indeed there is a point—a fact of which he begins to entertain grave doubts.
"I do not know what you call hurry," he replies drily; "I have been awaiting this mystic utterance for sixteen or seventeen hours."
Her sallow cheek takes on a pinky tinge of mortification at his accent.