He found himself becoming absorbed in the mere contemplation of her. He was aware of a character in her presence at once familiar to him by long study and intangible; it had the quality of bloom, that a touch destroys. She had hair that coiled upon her head and left its shape discernible, and beneath it a certain breadth and frankness of brow upon which the eyebrows were etched marvelously. She was like a lantern which softens and tempers the impetuous flame within it, and turns its ardor into radiance. The Kafir and the shame and the imprudence of that affair did not suffice to darken that light; at the most, they could but cause it to waver and make strange shadows for a moment, like the candle one carries, behind a guarding hand, through a windy corridor. It did not cool the strong flame that was the heart of the combination.
Suddenly Margaret laid the letter down. She put it back on her plate with an abrupt gesture and he noted that she had gone pale, and that her mouth was wry as though with a bitter taste. She even withdrew her fingers from the sheet with exactly the movement of one who has by accident set his hand on some unexpected piece of foulness.
She went on with her breakfast quietly enough, but she did not look at her letters again. They were perhaps the first letters in years to come to the Sanatorium and be dismissed with a single perusal.
"Fog in London," said Mr. Samson, suddenly. "Feller writes as though it was the plague. _He_ does n't know what it is to have too much bally sun."
The glare that shone through the window returned his glance unwinking.
"Fog?" responded Mrs. Jakes, alertly. "That is bad. Such dreadful things happen in fogs. I remember a lady at Home, who was divorced afterwards, who lost her way in a fog and didn't get home for two days, and even then she had somebody else's umbrella and could no more remember where she 'd got it than fly. And she was so confused and upset that all she could say to her husband was: 'Ed,'--his name was Edwin--'Ed, did you remember to have your hair cut?'"
"Had he remembered?" demanded Mr. Samson.
"I think not," replied Mrs. Jakes. "What with the worry, and the things the servant said, I don't believe he 'd thought of it. He always did wear it rather long."