For a little while they were gay, and then he cleared away plates and glasses, and a silence fell between them. He settled down in another of the great chairs and lit a cigarette. A smile curved in the corners of his mouth and vanished; he was thinking hard. Susan watched him, shading her eyes with her hand that he might not raise his head suddenly and read their wistfulness. She was not often alone with him in the house.
What was he thinking? His face was no longer careless; the kind blue eyes were fixed earnestly on the fire. She remembered the strangeness of Julia's look and her heart ached, guessing. Something must have happened between them; he must have let her see unmistakably that he loved her still. For there had been no restlessness in Julia's air, no bravado,—it had been the smile of a woman who was sure. And he had himself set a barrier between them.
She felt a wild longing to comfort him, to take his head on her arm and whisper that nothing was too hard for a man,—nothing worth that steadfast, unhappy gaze.
He moved, and the start it gave her set her pulses beating fast. If he had not stirred, might not the impulse have been too much for her? might she not have found herself kneeling by him, comforting him in the madness of her heart? She heard her own voice, imploring, sharp as if in some stress of mortal fright—
"Oh, let me go! Oh, will you not let me go?"
He had looked up quickly. The sobbing wildness of her cry broke in on his absent mood.
"You are tired of the farce?" he said.
She came back to herself. What was the matter with her? "I—cannot—bear it," she said slowly.
And for a minute there was silence again between them. She heard the fire crackling, a far-away clock ticking on the stairs; ... she thought she could hear the silence itself.
"I didn't know it was hurting you," he said.