“You looked so strange, so far away. As if you were in a spell. Even now, you are not quite out of it.”
“I was in myself, I guess.”
“You won’t tell me what you dreamed?”
She looked at him.
Big, burly boy, with his blue muffler over his throat and his hands hanging so limp beside him. He was so at ease, so friendly curious, so cool. While she was white inside with the need of telling. It was impossible. In the shadow, a pain viced Cornelia’s homely face—lent accent to the wrinkles already upon her brow. It went, leaving its sharp bite.
“How have you been, David?”
He might still ask her, force her to tell him.... David began to talk. He rambled along the flowered paths of his own green life. He forgot about her dream, he forgot about Cornelia. As her chance of self-bestowal, of drawing him back with her to the self-land she had left, faded before his dear indifference, Cornelia’s hands were fists, her soul retracted with hurt.... He chatted.
She left him to put on her hat. She saw herself in the mirror: plain Cornelia, Motherer! who had found her boy at the age when boys go forth. Her mouth affirmed the bitter resolution that must make it hard: her eyes fought against their tears—David was there—with a dry will that must dull and dim them. The ineffable glow of confidence and of the sense of being sweet faded still farther from her face, leaving it older and less sweet.
So she returned to David: they went out to dine.