Cordelia came over to Hartley almost timidly, and looked up at him out of her eyes after the manner of a child who had done wrong and had been punished, and was repentant once more.
She was startled to notice the change in him, to see how attenuated and drawn his face was, how worn he looked about the eyes.
"My poor boy!" There was much of the maternal in that little cry. "My poor boy, what is it?" she asked with trembling lip, in her earnestness taking his hand once more.
"Oh, it's nothing. I've been working jolly hard and got a little under the weather," he explained. He could never endure sympathy.
"And you never told me!" There was a touch of more than kindness, of more than melancholy reproof, in the unconsciously softened voice. It seemed to rend all the fogs that had muffled and darkened life.
"And now, heigho, I feel like a holiday!" he cried as he told her, half ashamed of the softer mood that stole over him, how much had been accomplished with The Unwise Virgins.
"Why, surely you haven't finished it--so soon?"
"Not finished, altogether, but the bulk of the work is done."
"The bulk done!" She was thinking of her months of silent and agonized labor--her labor that had been lost.
"Yes, now the work of the file remains--and that's easy."
Cordelia, he thought, did not appear able to share in his enthusiasm. She seemed to take no delight in what he had called their common accomplishment. She accepted it all very quietly, and did not even ask when she might see the manuscript. He had expected her to be more openly interested, at any rate, and was momentarily chilled and puzzled at her unlooked-for indifference. Then some gleam of light seemed to come to him, for looking at her again, she smiled up at him through her still gentle glance of reproach.
"Did you forget? This is my first night."
"Your first night?" He felt that their lives had been strangely divided of late, that he was looking out on her existence as through a floating veil, or as one looks from a tower on a windy world.
"Yes, to-night The Silver Poppy has its first performance--it's first performance in town, I mean."
He had forgotten it completely, shamefully. But it brought him a relieving touch of happiness; he understood now why she had elbowed into the background the thing that had stood out so important to him. He was trying to explain away his stupidity and to laugh away his absent-mindedness when Mrs. Spaulding's voice sounded in the hall.