He went to her, drew her into the room, and shut the door. He gazed at her with incredulous delight. He wanted to touch her, to make sure that she was real.
“Why don’t you tell me?” he queried, as she stood there smiling but not speaking.
As she delivered her message, every word seemed to give birth to an unspoken, irrelevant flight of words that fluttered round them with ghostly rustle of wings, finding no resting-place. When she had finished, she stood irresolute.
“I must go back.”
Her eyes roamed over the room, and every now and then swept over him in passing. They caressed him in that quick, diffident, gentle way she had. They rested with a mild dismay on all his disorder, and a pucker of trouble appeared between her brows.
“What’s the matter, Mrs. Dene?”
“Oh, your things want straightening,” she murmured in tones of distress. “Doesn’t any one have charge of your room? The dust,—look at it! The litter!”
She moved to his table as though her deft hands were yearning towards it. She made little tentative touches at his things, while he watched her. She looked at him to see whether she was annoying him.
“Oh, do you mind?”
“On the contrary, I like to see you doing it.”