there for a few minutes, and then she went in and began to play.
He was lying with his arm across his face when she came after an hour to the study door.
“I’m going to have some supper. Do you want any?”
“No, thanks. I’ll stay here for a while longer.”
Chilled by his manner she went back and ate alone, and then restless and unhappy she went out to walk on the other side of the house.
Something in the mysterious depths of the range stretching up to the stars, in its potent silence, the weight of life it carried so secretively, stirred her out of her little petty mood, calmed her senses. She told herself it was absurd to put the significance she had been doing on Dane’s manner. He could not always be responsive, but it was the fact that this was the first time he had not been so that arrested her.
He lay still for a few minutes after she had gone to eat her supper. Then he turned over and buried his face in the cushions.
“Oh God, if I were only ten years younger!” He stretched his lips on his set teeth. He thought rather bitterly of the fate that had brought Valerie to him as the last woman he should love instead of the first. He was romantic enough to think his life might have been very different. They had had two years together, even more than he had hoped in the beginning, and there was still more of it. She still loved him, he knew that. She was still happy there. They were not yet looking at each other with that premeditated and deliberate politeness that decent people used to disguise the death of spontaneity. Whenever he was well life was wonderful between them.
He did wish she had not spoken of his health. It was
