Marie smiled.
"Well, dear, he has wired before, and written before, and not come," she said. "And I did so want to go on the river."
She took off her hat and ran her fingers through her hair. Her nerves felt all on edge. She was afraid that at any moment the door would open and Chris walk in. She wondered desperately what she should say to him. It frightened her, because there was none of the ecstasy in her heart, which had once been such a joy and a torment.
"Chris was hungry, so we did not wait dinner. Have you had yours?" Miss Chester asked.
"Yes; no, I mean. I am not hungry; we had such a big lunch."
Marie wandered restlessly down the room. A sporting paper lay on one of the tables amongst the silver trinkets and queer little Victorian boxes which had belonged to her mother. Chris had thrown it down there, she knew—and there was cigarette ash in one of the fern pots.
180 "He looks splendidly well." Miss Chester went on, attacking her shawl once more. "So brown! I never saw anyone with such a brown skin."
Marie could picture him quite well—knew how startlingly blue his eyes would look against that weather-tanned face. She stopped in front of a photograph of him, and stared at it with a curious expression in her eyes.
It had been taken when he was at Cambridge and showed him on the river in boating flannels. She remembered so well when he had sent that photograph home—it had been during the one short period of her life when for a little while she had almost forgotten him.
She had not seen him for weeks, and a fresh school had made new interests for her that had pushed him into the background of her thoughts. Then that photograph came, and she could remember as plainly as though it had been yesterday the sudden revulsion of feeling that had flooded her heart, bringing back all the old longing ache and worshipful love, even causing her to despise herself because just for a little she had forgotten her idol.