Her eyes fell before his. She made a pretence of eating. Jane entered with the next course. They discussed the weather, until she had retired.
“What could I do to make your life happier, Renie?” he asked. A futile question; yet men will continue to put it.
“What can I do to make yours happier? That is the all-important point to me.”
“Nothing,” he said in a low voice.
“This is the happiest time of my life.”
“There is nothing I could do—beyond asking you to dinner?”
“Nothing,” he repeated. “If there were, I should tell you.”
“You have only to ask,” said Irene.
Woman could say no more. There was a short silence. Hugh understood—yet did not divine. The inner man fell at her feet, blessing her for her sweet graciousness of surrender. He was fine enough to perceive that she was grateful to him for restraining expression of the love long known to her, and that her words were meant to relieve him of the obligation to which he had bound himself. But it was divine and tender charity. Nothing more. It was her way to reward royally out of proportion to services rendered.
“Life is a queer tangle,” he remarked after a while.