felt they must have. She had been encouraged by Dane’s assurance that this was nothing to be alarmed at, that she might go on for some time before she achieved a sense for technique.
But it annoyed her this night that she could not manage words well enough to put down what was simmering in her mind about the South Pole explorers. Her mood was too emotional. She took up a newspaper and tried to read the story calmly, to view it in a detached manner. But it was too much for her. She began to cry again, and gave way unreservedly. But she knew that she was not crying solely because a few men had died heroically away down there in the snow.
As she sat still at last, feeling very lonely and sorry for herself, she heard the launch come into the bay below; she sat up listening, and because she had assumptions in her mind she thought she heard Dane stumble on the track through the trees.
With a quick movement she put out her lamp. Then she hurried into her bedroom and began to undress in the dark. She did not want him to see that she was still up, as if she had been waiting to see what time he came home. And above all things she did not want him to come to her the worse for drink. He had never done so, but she had the persistent fear that he might.
Dane saw her light as he came from the top of the steps, and he stood to wonder why it had so suddenly gone out. He knew it was after one o’clock. Had she been working, or was she anxious about him?
He knew he had been very depressed and disagreeable for days, but it had relieved him enormously to see that apparently she was not worried by it. She was wonderful, he thought. She did not fuss, and yet he felt her as a warm and understanding person. It would have driven
