And his shoulder remained a piece of tweed under her hand; he did not even bother to shake her off.
She sat down again to wait.
When at last he left the window it was to sit down by a lamp and take up a book. That was not a bad sign, in itself, as long as he made his reading an interlude and not an ending. But as she sat watching him it became more and more evident that he regarded their interview as closed. And so they sat stolidly for some time, James determined that nothing should lead him into another humiliating exhibition of feeling and Beatrice determined that whatever happened she would make him stop ignoring her. And though she was at first merely hurt by his indifference she presently began to feel her determination strengthened by something else, something which, starting as hardly more than natural feminine pique shortly grew into irritation, then into anger of a slow-burning type and lastly, as her eyes tired of seeing him sit there so unaffectedly absorbed in his reading, into something for the moment approaching active dislike. We all know what hell hath no fury like, and Beatrice, as she fed her mind on the thought of how often he had insulted and repelled and above all ignored her that evening, began to consider herself very much in the light of a woman scorned.
"Is that all, James?" she ventured at length.
He put down his book and looked up with the manner of one making a great effort to be reasonable.
"What do you want, Beatrice?"
Beatrice would have given a good deal to be able to say that what she really wanted was that he should take her to him as he had that day at Bar Harbor and never once since, but as she could not she made a substitute answer.
"We can't leave things as they are, can we?"
"Why not? Haven't we said too much already?"
"Too much for peace, but not enough for satisfaction. We can't leave things hanging in the air this way."