Its new sadness and premature age moved her strangely; with
a peculiar stab of compassion and pain she had seen for the first time
the gray in the nondescript hair about his temples. For his face, she
had seen that the smooth sheath of satisfied self-absorption, which had
once overlain it like the hard veneer on a table-top, had been scorched
away as in a baptism by fire; from which all that was best in it had
come out at once strengthened and chastened. And she thought that the
shining quality of honesty in his face must be such as to strike
strangers on the street.
And now, behind her on the office floor, she heard his footsteps, and in
one breath was suddenly cold with the fear that her hour had come, and
hot with the fear that it had not.
Engrossed with her papers, she moved so as to keep her back toward him;
but he, with a directness which would not flinch even in this untried
emergency, deliberately intruded himself between her and the table; and
so once more they stood face to face.
"I don't understand you," he began, his manner at its quietest. "Why do
you want to do this for me?"
At this close range, she glanced once at him and instantly looked away.
Pages:
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695