Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/393

 He did not voice the thought that was behind this temporizing—the thought that in the days to come he would win her to the act that would relieve her of all necessity of finding work for herself. But she knew that the thought was there, and she accepted it unsaid.

They had walked into a street that ended in a cul-de-sac, and they had to stop and retrace their steps; but his arguments, his pleadings, his promises went on without interruption, in a current against which she no longer tried to struggle. They lost themselves in a maze of those old Greenwich by-paths that wandered in aimless turns and circlings between rows of quaint red-brick houses with colonial doors and brass knockers. They came unexpectedly on a busy thoroughfare, noisy with street-car traffic, and he did not recognise it; but by this time she had surrendered her last objection, and they made a truce of their troubles in their attempts to discover where they were. A policeman directed them to a street that would return them to Sixth Avenue. They went back toward their little restaurant, for breakfast, in the silence of hunger and spent emotions.

He regained his usual optimism at the table, but he found that he could not raise her from her despondent apprehensions, and he had to content himself with the thought that after her mother had come and gone she would return to happiness. He parted from her in the hallway outside her door, exacting her meek promise that she would allow nothing to force her to leave him. He held her hand, lingering, on a desire to make a fonder leave-taking; but she seemed withdrawn from him by her anxiety, and he was afraid to intrude his