Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/283

 "Then you were engaged to her when I?"

"Yes," he said sulkily. "And I treated her like a yellow dog."

In the lamplight they stared at each other. His boot lay on the floor, one of those gay boots which he had donned so happily the day before. Above it was his tall weary figure, his face streaked with dust and sweat. He looked older, unhappy, defiant. Across from him, her red dressing gown held around her, a haunted look in her face, was Kay. Only a few feet separated them, but neither could cross it.

"Then?" she asked, painfully quiet, "when I came to you she was expecting to marry you?"

"The same as your Herbert."

"But it isn't quite the same, is it? I came to you. You had to marry me, or send me back home."

"Oh, for God's sake, Kay! I wanted to marry you."

"I wonder if you did."

She turned and went wearily into the bedroom, and crawled into bed. He sat for a time as she had left him. After awhile she heard him strike a match, and the familiar odor of his cigarette came through the open door. When he moved finally she braced herself for a renewal of the scene between them, but he did not come in. Instead she heard him lighting the kitchen fire and putting the kettle on, and later she knew he was soaking his swollen ankle in hot water. Her thoughts milled about: Clare, Tom, herself. That day when she had gone to him, and they had been married. His easy casual ignoring of his engagement to Clare, his almost equally easy and casual marriage to her. Yet was she being fair to him? He had worked hard. He had been faithful to her, so far as she knew. He had even ridden forty miles that night, for fear she might be ill.

But had he? Might he not have suspected that she had seen him, and have come desperately to make his peace?

She waited and listened in the darkness. Surely the next move was up to him; in her morbid condition his very silence gave corroboration to her fear. But he did not come, and at last she fell into an exhausted sleep. When she awakened it was dawn, and he had gone again.

She did not see him for three days.