He scribbled a line of acquiescence and gave it to the waiting messenger-boy. “I had not thought of the dregs,” he said to himself.
That evening they sat drearily in their accustomed places by the fireside, each knowing it to be their last together. Night after night they had spent in each other’s society, Yvonne sewing or reading or dreaming in a lazy, contented way, Joyce writing upon a board laid across his knees. Sometimes she would come and lean over the back of his chair and watch the words as they came from his pen, her soft wavy black hair very near his fair, close-trimmed head.
“Send me away if I’m worrying you,” she used to say.
Whereupon he would laugh happily and answer:--
“See how beautifully I am writing. I should never have thought of that remark if you had not been there.”
“I like to play at feeling a guardian angel,” she said once.
“You can feel it without the playing,” he replied, drawing his head aside and looking round at her. “When your wings are over me like that, I do work that I could n’t do unaided.”
But now, on this last evening, they sat apart--half the world already between them--and talked constrainedly, with long silences. For the greater part of the time he shaded his face with his hand, sparing himself the sight of her hungered-for sweetness and saving her the sight of the hunger he felt was in his eyes. When at last she rose to bid him good-night, he nerved himself to meet her gaze calmly. And then for the first time he was shocked at the change that the night and the day had wrought in her.
She stood before him, infinitely sweet and simple; but more wan even than she had been on that day in the hospital when she had learned the loss of her voice. For the still unvanished pathos of childhood that had then smoothed her face was gone, and the sterner pathos of the woman’s experience had taken its place. Yet the interpretation did not come to him.
“My poor child,” he said. “You are scarcely strong enough yet to bear such an upheaval as this. Try to have a good sleep.” He held the door for her to pass out. And then with a great gulp, he continued, “You must look your best to-morrow.”
He caught her soft cold hand, put it to his lips, and shut the door quickly. The prison seemed as comfort when compared with this torment.