He still looked disturbed and angry, and this break in their conversation was final. It seemed impossible to take up the thread of it again. They stood together watching the fire fade away till it was a faint glow almost level with the ground. Then at last Renfrew spoke, in a voice that was almost timid.
“Claire,” he said.
“Yes,” she answered out of the dull twilight that would soon be darkness.
“If I have said anything to-night to hurt you, don't think of it, don't remember it. I don't know—I don't seem to have been like myself to-night. I believe that cursed music irritated me, so ugly, and so monotonous; it got right on my nerves, I think.”
“Did it?”
“Without my knowing it.”
He felt for one of her hands and clasped it.
“Yes, dear. We both said more than we meant. Didn't we?”
Claire did not assent; but she let her hand lie in his. That satisfied him then, although afterwards he remembered her silence. Soon the fire was dead; and they said good-night in the wind, which seemed colder because there was no more light.