"Not—?"
"All the year round.—It's cheaper," she added with that little touch of staunchness that had become hers.
"But it's too—"
I was cut short by the look of anguish in her eyes, the most poignant sign of emotion that I had seen her show since my return. There was an awkward silence, while I stood looking at her, thinking of nothing so much as how her head would look against a worn, gold Florentine background, instead of silhouetted against these flat unchanging stretches of unbending roads and red barns. It seemed that she and Jim were saying something to each other. Then just as she turned to go, he stopped her.
"You'll forgive me, because I'm an old friend of Tom's," he was urging, "if I ask you to drive to town with Tom and myself for supper."
There was an incongruity in the request that could not have escaped either of them. I could see the color mounting to her temples and then ebbing away, leaving her whiter than before. Her lips parted to answer, but closed again sturdily.
"It couldn't—be arranged. If it could, I should have liked to," she supplemented stiffly.
It was a stiffness that made me want to cry out to the hilltops in rebellion.
"But suppose it could be arranged?" suggested Jim.
She looked away from us.