Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/57

 "Well, well, that brings us a great deal nearer than ever, that does," said Callcott, looking at Somers with glowing, smiling eyes which the other man could not quite understand, eyes with something desirous, and something perhaps fanatical in them. Somers could not understand. As for the being brought nearer to Callcott, that was apparently entirely a matter of Jack's own feeling. Somers himself had never felt more alone and far off. Yet he trembled at the other man's strange fervour. He vibrated helplessly in some sort of troubled response.

The vibration from the two men had by this time quite penetrated into the other room and into the consciousness of the two women. Harriet came in all wondering and full of alert curiosity. She looked from one to the other, saw the eyes of both men shining, saw the puzzled, slightly scared look on her husband's face, and the glowing handsomeness on Jack's, and she wondered more than ever.

"What are you two men talking about?" she asked pointedly. "You look very much moved about something."

"Moved!" laughed Jack. "We're doing fifty miles an hour, and not turning a hair."

"I'm glad I'm not going with you then," said Harriet. "It's much too late at night for me for that sort of thing."

Victoria went over to her husband and stood close at his side ruffling up his brown, short, crisp, bright hair.

"Doesn't he talk nonsense, Mrs Somers, doesn't he talk nonsense," the young wife crooned, in her singing, contralto voice, as she looked down at him.

Harriet started at the sudden revelation of palpitating intimacy. She wanted to go away, quick. So did Somers. But neither Jack nor Victoria wanted them to go.

Jack was looking up at Victoria with a curious smile, touched with a leer. It gave his face, his rather long, clean-shaven face with the thick eyebrows, most extraordinarily the look of an old mask. One of those old Greek masks that give a fixed mockery to every feeling. Leering up at his young wife with the hearty leer of a player masked as a faun that is at home, on its own ground. Both Harriet and Somers felt amazed, as if they had strayed into the wrong wood.