Might she! Peter, his face shining, brought out his red flannel needle-book—he kept it on the shelf with his shaving things!—and, his face shining more, sat on a creaking camp-chair and watched her.
"Miggy," he said, as she caught the threads skilfully together, "I don't believe I've ever seen you sew. I know I never have."
"This isn't sewing," Miggy said.
"It's near enough like it to suit me," said Peter.
He drew a breath long, and looked about him. I knew how he was seeing the bare room, lamp-lighted, and himself trying to work in spite of the longing that teased and possessed him and bade him give it up and lean back and think of her; or of tossing on the hard couch in the tyranny of living his last hour with her and of living, too, the hours that might never be. And here she was in this room—his room. Peter dropped his head on his hand and his eyes did not leave her face save to venture an occasional swift, ecstatic excursion to her fingers.
Simply and all quietly, as Nature sends her gifts, miracles moved toward completion while Miggy sewed. The impulse to do for him this trifling service was like a signal, and when she took up the needle for him I think that women whose hands had long lain quiet stirred within her blood. As for Peter—but these little housewifely things which enlighten a woman merely tease a man, who already knows their import and longs for all sweet fragments of time to be merged in the long possession.
Miggy gave the needle back to Peter and he took it—needle, red book, and hand.
"Miggy!" he said, and the name on his lips was like another name. And it was as if she were in some place remote and he were calling her.