A moment longer the man sat smiling at her; then shade by shade the whimsical expression vanished, and the normal proprietary look he had grown to assume in her presence took its place.
"By the way, Bess," he commented, "isn't it about time to drop sarcasm when you and I are together? I know I've been a most reprehensible offender, but haven't I been punished enough?"
"Punished?" There was just the ghost of a smile. "Is this your idea of punishment?"
The man flushed involuntarily. His face had cleared remarkably in the past week of abstinence, and through the fair skin the colour showed plain.
"Well, perhaps punishment is a little too severe. Leastways you've held me at arm's length until I'm beginning to despair."
"Despair?" Again the ghost smiled forth. "Do you fancy I'm so dull that I don't realise what I'm doing, what you've done?"
For the second time the involuntary colour appeared; but the role that the man was playing, the role of the injured, was too effective to abandon at once.
"You can't deny that you've held me away all this last week, Bess," he objected. "You've permitted me to call and call again; but that is all. Otherwise we're not a bit nearer than we were when I first returned."
"Nearer?" This time the smile did not come. Even the ghost refused to appear. "I wonder if that's true." A pause. "At least I've gotten immeasurably farther away from another."
"Your husband you mean?"