“I can’t, I can’t, the glare burns my eyes out.”
“Nonsense, my dear lady, control yourself—”
His irritability reduced Miss Pennington to peevish tears. She called for her sister, and began to babble hysterically, an impossible subject.
Parker Steel pushed back his chair in a dudgeon.
“I can’t see anything,” he said; “utterly hopeless.”
Murchison drew back the curtains and let dim daylight into the room. He helped Miss Pennington back to the sofa, very gentle with her, like a man bearing with the petulance of a sick child, and then turned to Steel with a slight frown.
“Shall we talk in the library?”
“Yes.”
“I will just put my lamp away.”
They crossed the hall together in silence, and entered the room with its irreproachable array of books, and the logs burning on the irons. Murchison went and stood by one of the windows. A red sunset was coloring the west, and the dark trees in the garden seemed fringed with flame.