She watched his hands as he tried to describe the vortex. He used them in conversation more than most Englishmen, perhaps because they were long and well shaped. She remembered how the touch of them had once thrilled her.
That magic had departed; exorcised by her better knowledge of him; or perhaps only overlaid. For the moment she was empty of all passion. Suspense, shame, pity had squeezed her dry like a sponge. When life flowed back into her veins, would the spell resume its dominion? Now she was nothing but a brain dispassionately scheming the redress of the wrong she had wrought, and grappling with the consequences. But one day, when the crisis was over, she knew her body would come to life. Would it then remember those well-shaped hands?
'Well,' she told herself unsympathetically, 'it would have to.' If Archie had not her heart, he had her word. And ignorant of the blow she must deal him, Dick talked gaily of a dozen different matters. He pointed to a stretch of opposite coast that was blotted from sight. The sky above the gap was a black fog that shredded into streamers of cloud. The hills on either side of the gap lay clear and clean in the sunlight.
'Rain,' said Dick, 'it'll be cooler here soon.' But since she had told Archie her decision, Norah's anxiety about the heat and its possible effects had been relieved.
'Dick,' she said, 'listen to me for a minute.' Pity poured into her. Contempt had given way to understanding. For all his thirty years he was only a boy. Good-looking, attractive, lovable. All his possibilities were in sight. He had no reserves to draw on and, if he had failed in the hour of test, the fire had been hot indeed.
'Dick, haven't you noticed,' she began, 'haven't you noticed that nothing good lasts? Sooner or later one goes back to school.'
'What is the matter?' he asked.
'Everything,' she said. 'But there's no need for you to mind. The world's full of pretty women—and ones that won't let you down.'
'Optimist!' he laughed, 'what are you talking about?'
I'm trying to tell you.... It's all finished now, Dick. Oh, do understand! we're through.'