“I am not warm,” she said. “I have stayed in, during the heat.”
His eyes had questioned if she, too, was thirsty.
“It is deliciously comfortable here.”
Her head tossingly measured the room. Quincy did not see it. But he felt its cool, fresh walls and the white wood and the cane furniture. It was a sitting room. Two heavy doors in a dark varnish gave accent to its breezy tidiness.
She chatted gaily. Allusions to his abstention from her while he was still at college shafted to him and inflamed him. But she laughed at his excuses.
“I am not exacting,” she declared.
And then, once more, she was serious. It had been so long, she was not sure now, that she still knew him. What, all this time, had happened to him? His answers showed his discomfort. Julia arose and stood over him.
“What is wrong?” she said. Her hand went to his brow. “Why is that ruffled?” And then, with the other hand beneath his chin, she turned his head upward.
A veil went over Quincy’s eyes.