SON OF THE WIND
This startled him.
"What made you think I wanted to ask anything?"
"Because you said, 'Tell me,' as you started toward me."
He had been unaware that he had spoken anything of his thought, and he faced this idea with dismay. He had the opportunity he had wanted, yet now he looked upon it with disenchantment. He pushed it away. He did not want it now—the trouble of it, while her eyes were on his, and his hand beneath her knocking heart.
"I think," he said, " I had the inspired presumption to begin to ask you if you loved me." He said it, and in that moment it had become true to him. It seemed to him, indeed, as if that had been the only thing he had ever wanted. He lost his sense of perspective—left the past behind.
Straight into the house they went from their tryst, and Carron was to recall for a long while the scene without a word which followed. Mrs. Rader was sitting in the dining-room in the half light, her body relaxed easelessly in one of the stiff uncompromising chairs, her hands lying palms up, half open, apart, the weariness of the work of all day in her lap. Her head drooped a little aside; her eyes gazed at destiny, resigned, immuned to disappointment.
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