Betty Berry, standing beside the table, raised her eyes from the paper, and beckoned to Morning. His first thought was that he might disturb her prompting, and he hesitated. She looked up again. Then he thought she might want her wrap. He tiptoed forward and put it around her shoulders.
“It wasn’t that,” she whispered, her eyes upon the paper. “I wanted you to keep me company. This is long. Sit down.”
“Won’t you—sit down?” he said from behind, very close to her hair.
She shook her head.... It was peculiar—she standing, and he in the chair. The soft wrap winged out, and her arm beneath slid across his shoulder; the hollow of her left arm against his cheek. He kissed it, and his face burned against its coolness.
She shivered slightly, but did not take her arm away. Now he looked up into her face—her eyelids drawn, her lips compressed, her gaze steadily held to the manuscript. The Phantom was carried on by the alien humor. Laughter was beginning to crackle here and there through the house. Betty Berry followed with her eyes—just the words.
“I was so glad to find you,” Morning whispered.
Her lips moved.
Matters tumbled over each other in his mind to say to her; he was thinking sentences rather than words. He knew that it was not well to talk now, but there seemed so much to say, and so little time. He caught himself promising to give her understanding, and he told her that she seemed everything he wanted to know. His cheek was burning as never before....
The remotest happened. The Phantom faltered in a climax, and covered the difficulty with a trick—awaiting the line from the wings. Betty Berry had become rigid. Her eyes would not see the page.
Morning spoke a sentence in a low, carrying way. He had plucked it from the page painfully near his own eyes. It may be that the Memorizer righted himself, or that the prompted line was what he needed. Anyway, he was going again, and rising to the end....