"Come, we must sleep, Hermione!" he said. "It's nearly dawn. I can almost see the smoke on Etna."
He shut the French window and drew the bolt.
She had gone into the bedroom and was standing by the dressing-table. She did not know why, but a great shyness had come upon her. It was like a cloud enveloping her. Never before had she felt like this with Maurice, not even when they were first married. She had loved him too utterly to be shy with him. Maurice was still in the sitting-room, fastening the shutters of the window. She heard the creak of wood, the clatter of the iron bar falling into the fastener. Now he would come.
But he did not come. He was moving about in the room. She heard papers rustling, then the lid of the piano shut down. He was putting everything in order.
This orderliness was so unusual in Maurice that it made a disagreeable impression upon her. She began to feel as if he did not want to come into the bedroom, as if he were trying to put off the moment of coming. She remembered that he had seemed shy of her. What had come to them both to-night? Her instinct moved her to break through this painful, this absurd constraint.
"Maurice!" she called.
"Yes."
His voice sounded odd to her, almost like the voice of some other man, some stranger.
"Yes. Hermione."