"Were you afraid?" Christopher asked her, as Ridgeley went to look after the awnings.
"I forgot the storm," she said, and did not meet his eyes.
VI
Lying awake in her wide bed, Anne thought it over. She was still shaken by Christopher's vehemence. She had believed him her friend, and had found him her lover—and oh, he had brought back youth to her. If he left her now, how could she stand it—the days with no one but Jeanette Ware, and the soul-shaking knowledge of what was ahead?
And Ridgeley would not care—much. In a week be swallowed up by his work....
She tried to read, but found it difficult. Across each page flamed Christopher's sentences.... "We'll ride through the desert.... We'll set our sails for strange harbors...."
Was that what the old man had meant at the circus.... "What you think is evil—cannot be evil"? Would Christopher give her all that she had hoped of Ridgeley? If she lived to be eighty, she and Ridgeley would—jog. Was Christopher right—"You'll have more happiness in a few months than some people in a lifetime?"
She heard her husband moving about in the next room, the water booming in his bath. A thin line of light showed under his door.
She shut her book and turned out her lamp. The storm had died down and the moon was up. Through the open window she could see beyond the garden to the grove of birches.
Hitherto, the thought of the little grove had been as of a sanctuary. She was aware, suddenly, that it had become a place of contending forces. Were the guardian angels driven out...?