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264 obtruded itself: it would not be honest to tell Henri nothing, not even a casual word, so that at any rate he should not imagine, if he came to hear later, that she had been plotting behind his back. ..

All of a sudden, the anxiety, the uneasiness became so great in her that she rose, impulsively, and went upstairs. The servant was droning sentimentally. Constance quietly opened the door of Henri's little den. He was sitting in a chair, with his arms hanging down beside him; he was not even smoking.

"Am I disturbing you?" she asked. "I should like to speak to you for a moment . . ."

He gave her a sharp look. Usually, when she came in like that, it meant that she had something to reproach him with, that she was spoiling for a scene. . . about a trifle, sometimes about nothing. She would come in then with the same words; and her voice at once sounded aggressive. This time, though she tried to speak gently, her voice, because of her uneasiness and anxiety, sounded harsh and discordant; and he, with his irritated nerves, seemed to hear the aggressive note, the prelude to a scene. It was as though his nerves at once became set, as though he were pulling himself together in self-defence:

"What is it now?" he asked, roughly.

She sat down, outwardly calm, inwardly trembling, anxious, uneasy. And she made an effort to