"Come along, poor boy. I'll find you something."
"Come on, Charles." Catherine went into the kitchen. "Here's a wonderful roast beef," she called back, and Charles came reluctantly. "You sit there--" she pushed the chair near the shining white table. "Coffee, or cocoa?"
"Cocoa, if it isn't too much trouble. I'd like to sleep. Had a cup of coffee."
"Did the dentist keep you all this time in his torture chamber?" Catherine moved swiftly from ice-chest to stove. If I can invoke our midnight lunches, all down the past, she thought--I can't go away, without trying to reach him. It is like death.
"No," said Charles. "I haven't been there all the evening."
Catherine stirred the foaming cocoa. Let's pretend, she wanted to cry out; let's pretend!
"I thought probably you would be asleep. Since you start off to-morrow."
"I wanted to see you." Catherine poured the cocoa and set it before him. She stood there, one hand spread delicately, the fingers pressed against the oilcloth. "And you--didn't want to see me, did you!" She was supplicating, provocative, leaning above him.
"I had to stop with some manuscript, at Miss Partridge's." Charles buttered a slice of bread deliberately, and forked a slice of pink meat to his place. "Is there any Worcestershire?"
"And she gave you coffee?" Catherine moved hastily away from the table, and felt blindly along the cupboard shelf for the bottle of sauce.
"Yes." Charles was blandly engrossed in his lunch.
He's as much as telling me that he chose to go to her, when he wished comfort. Catherine set the Worcestershire beside his plate. I won't hear him. But what a burlesque, my serving him, when I can't, through any outer humility, reach him.
"No. This is fine." His upward glance was puzzled, uneasy.
Ah, I have no pride, no decency! she cried to herself. Her heart was beating in suffocating rhythm; her fingers lifted, undirected, aching for the touch of that stubborn, beloved head--the prominent temples, the hollow above the cheekbones, the old intimate brushing across his eyes, down to cup his strong, obdurate chin.
"Charles," she whispered, and swayed backward from his sudden violent start, which clattered the carving knife to the floor.
"Damn!" he clapped his hand to his jaw. "Oh, damn!"