“Jem,” she said.
“Marcia!”
She made one eager step forward. A vagrant gust, ranging the darkness, caught the door and drove it savagely to, behind her. She threw a startled glance back. It was as if the impalpable fates had cut off the last chance of withdrawal.
“I have come back to you.” The sweet precision of her speech was the unforgotten same, blessedly unchanged in any intonation. But wonder held Jeremy speechless. He stood, his hands knuckling the desk, and devoured her with his eyes.
“Will you not speak to me?” she said, with a quick sorrowful little intake of the breath. “You frighten me. You look so strange. Have you been ill?”
At that he came forward and took her hand, and drew out a chair for her. “Not ill,” he heard himself say in a surprisingly commonplace voice. “Sit down.”
She shook her head gently. “I can look at you better, standing.”
Her candid eyes swept over him. She saw a face thinner and more drawn than she had remembered it; bitten into by stern lines about the mouth; the eyes tired but more thoughtful, and just over the temple nearest her a fleck of gray in the dark sweep of his hair. Involuntarily she put forth a swift hand and touched it.
“Oh, Jem!” she whispered with quivering lips.
He seemed to brace himself against her light touch. “That?” he said. “Oh, that is n’t anything.”