“You are worrying about something? What is it?” At last he was conscious of Laura Duffield: his trivial words were over.
She was ageing. There was a drawn tightness about her eyes, a sag at her throat. It was a day on which she was not looking well. And looking well was coming to be an art, these years of life when art grows difficult. Debts. The incredible burden of holding up her head.
“Come and sit beside me, Tom.”
She was graceful. The couch was low. She sat ensconced in a corner, her outstretched arm hung in a flimsy sleeve, color of faded violet. Her skin like the sleeve was dim. Her eyes and the stones in her rings were bright.
“You are so quick to understand. I am going to tell you. I’m worrying about Marcia.”
“That won’t help us, you know.”
“Why can’t she make up her mind to love some one?”
Tom laughed. “What a lot of contradictions in a little sentence!”
“I don’t know—I don’t know what we may have to do.”
She seemed, after all, resigned. If Marcia could love no one, with her mind or without, let her stay single.