"Have you been in a passion, my child?"
She chafed her hands, loathing herself that she could not deaden down their shiver or the stinging pain in her head. What were these things at a time like this? Her physician was taking a different diagnosis of her disease from his first. He leaned over her, his face flushing, his voice lower, hurried.
"Were you disappointed? Did you watch—for me?"
"I watched for you, Douglas,"—trying to rise.
He took her hand and helped her up, then let it fall: he never held Dode's hand, or touched her hair, as Gaunt did.
"I watched for you,—I have something to say to you,"—steadying her voice.
"Not to-night," with a tenderness that startled one, coming from lips so thin and critical. "You are not well. You have some hard pain there, and you want to make it real. Let it sleep. You were watching for me. Let me have just that silly thought to take with me. Look up, Theodora. I want the hot color on your cheek again, and the look in your eye I saw there once,—only once. Do you remember?"
"I remember,"—her face crimson, her eyes flashing with tears. "Douglas, Douglas, never speak of that to me! I dare not think of it. Let me tell you what I want to say. It will soon be over."
"I will not, Theodora," he said, coolly. "See now, child! You are not your healthy self to-night. You have been too much alone. This solitude down there in your heart is eating itself out in some morbid whim. I saw it in your eye. Better it had forced itself into anger, as usual."
She did not speak. He took her hand and seated her beside him, talked to her in the same careless, gentle way, watching her keenly.