"And yet," retorted Renny, "you were angry with her for coming!" And he added bitterly: "But she could never do anything right in your eyes!"
Eden's eyes, full of mocking laughter, looked from one face to the other.
"Quarrel over me, do!" he said. "It makes me feel so important. And I haven't felt very important of late. I'm quite well again, I've no job, and my wife doesn't care a damn for me. In fact"—his eyes narrowed with malice—"it's my opinion that she only came back to Jalna to nurse me so that she could be near Renny!"
Renny sprang up, with lean red face redder with anger. The table was jarred, a miniature squall slopped the tea from the cups.
"I don't expect anything better of you, Meggie," he said. "But I thought that you, Eden, might have a little gratitude—a little decency!" He strode to the door. "I must go. If you want me to drive you home, come along."
This day seemed set apart for one emotion on top of another. He could not endure the indoors. Meg followed him to the porch. Before the bed of purple petunias, whose sweetness had risen to Finch's window, knelt Minny Ware, her face close to the flowers, absorbing their perfume drawn out by the sun. She liked the untidy, luxuriant, sticky things. They hadn't troubled themselves about delicacy, precision of form, like some flowers, but had given themselves up to sucking in all the sweetness possible and wastefully exuding it. Though she was conscious of the two in the porch, she made no sign, keeping her head bent over the flowers.
Meg clasped Renny's arm in both her hands. "There's someone," she said, indicating Minny with a glance, "who is deeply disappointed for your sake."
"I like her nerve! I don't want her sympathy. . . . Meggie!" He turned his dark eyes reproachfully on her. "Why will you try to shove that girl down my throat when you know that I love Alayne—and Alayne only—and always shall?"
Meg said, with a melancholy vibration in her voice:
