"She would not think. She would avoid the matter as she would a case of drunkenness."
The arm within his trembled. She said nothing more until they reached the little portico. She paused there, leaning against one of the crumbling columns, looking out into the night. From the distance beyond the great pier that stretched into the lake came the red glare of the lighthouse.
Sommers had gone in and was preparing the room for the night. She could hear him whistle as he walked to and fro, carrying out dishes, arranging the chairs and tables. He maintained an even mood, took the accidents of his fate as calmly as one could, and was always gentle. He had some well of happiness hidden to her. She went in, took off her cloak, and prepared to undress. His clothes, the nicety he preserved about personal matters, had taught her much of him. Her clothes had always been common, of the wholesale world; he had had his luxuries, his refinements, his individual tastes. Gradually, as his more expensive clothes had worn out, he had replaced them with machine-made articles of cheap manufacture. His belongings were like hers now. She was bringing him a little closer to her in such ways,—food and lodging and raiment. But not in thought and being. Behind those deep-set eyes passed a world of thought, of conjecture and theory and belief, that rarely expressed itself outwardly.
She let down her hair and began to take off her plain, unlovely clothes. Thus she approached the common human basis, the nakedness and simplicity of life. Her eyes lingered thoughtfully on her body; she touched herself as she unbuttoned, unlaced, cast aside the armor of convention and daily life.
"Howard!" she cried imperiously. He stopped his whistling and looked at her and smiled.
"Do you like me, Howard?" She blushed at the childishness of her eager question. But she demanded the expected answer with the insistence of unsatisfied love. And when he failed to reply at the moment, surprised by her mood, she knelt by his chair and grasped his knees.
"Isn't it all that you want, just the temple and me? Am I not enough to make up for the world and success and pleasure? I can make you love, and when you love you do not think."
She rose and faced him with gleaming eyes, stretching out her bare arms, deploying her whole woman's strength and beauty in mute appeal.
"Why do you ask?" he demanded, troubled.
"O Howard, you do not feel the mist that creeps in between us, though we are close together. Sometimes I think you are farther away than even in the old times, when I first saw you at the hospital. You think, think, and I can't get at your thought. Why is it so?"