“What did you say?—oh, I don’t know, didn’t see her,” he returned, wool-gathering as usual.
Wishing to please her, he again turned round to look; but the whole company had already disappeared in the doorway of a neighbouring restaurant.
Gina took his arm, with a gesture of famished and baffled desire. Laying her head on the sleeve of his great-coat, she brushed a wisp of hair from her cheek.
“No,” she said to me in an undertone; “no, I cannot tell; I myself am ignorant of the end for which suffering exists; why must there always be suffering?”
Still Owinski heard not a word we said; so we could converse quite freely. For my part, I could not love a man so continually lost in thought.
“Seldom have I happened upon a type in such sharp contrast to all that I am,” she continued, alluding to the woman we had just seen.
Far down in Gina’s eyes, whose nervous energy was tired and worn out,—somewhere very deep down,—there shone a livid gleam of disquiet.
She gazed searchingly at her fiancé, but there was no change in the expression of his face. After a time, he was aware that her glance was upon him; then he bent forward to her, and, stroking her glove, said smiling:
“What is the matter with you, Gina?”
“Nothing—only love for you,” she whispered.