when she got to bed that it was a long time before she fell into an uneasy dream.
“Come in,” she said at one o’clock the next day, as she heard the knock.
She had expected Lee, but it was Dane who walked in, closing the door behind him. He looked pale and tired, and there were circles round his eyes, but he was not frantic any more. He seemed relaxed and a little drowsy. There was a delicate scent about his fresh white shirt, and he was wearing the navy suit and the blue tie she liked best. His obvious attention to her likes touched her.
Afraid though he was of her judgment, he stumbled in to her like a child, with an appeal radiating from his whole expressive body. But he had no need to fear her. Her eyes flashed when she saw who it was. She sprang to her feet with her arms out, as if he had returned unexpectedly from a journey, and before he could speak he felt her kisses upon his lips and her hands caressing his head.
“I’ve been a beast to leave you alone, dear,” he said hoarsely, when he could find his voice.
“Oh, don’t, please. I understand.”
“I’m better alone.”
“Yes, yes, I know. Don’t think about it. Kiss me.”
He thought it wonderful that she could blot it out like that. But she was only too glad to blot it out, only too glad to have him restored to some measure of peace with himself.
It was the storm that broke upon the place that night, lasting for three days, that brought them to talk of going away. He did not particularly want to go. Changes in food upset him and he could not work so well, but he saw Valerie thought a change would do him good, and he thought she wanted it for herself. Each was thinking of the other and thinking wrong, as is the strange way of so
