Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/288

 "It doesn't seem to have made any difference to you," he reminded her, and smiled. But his heart was sick within him.

In the end it required what was by nature of a small calamity to bring him back to Kay.

He heard her calling to him, and he ran to the house. She was standing just inside the bolted door, and when he tried it her voice was frightened.

"Who is it?"

"Did you call me?"

She threw open the door, and he had a wild desire to catch her to him, but the next moment his pride took control once more.

"There was somebody outside the window, Tom. Looking in."

"Sure you didn't dream it?"

"I haven't been asleep," she said simply.

He looked down at her. In her bare feet, without the heels which gave her height, in her sleeveless nightgown, she looked small and young and infinitely appealing. Frightened too. For fear he would take her in his arms he swung around and stepped outside. After the lamplight—she had lighted a lamp—he could see nothing. He went back, got his revolver and started out again. There was starlight but no moon.

He made a round of the house; somewhere she heard him lighting matches, but when he opened the door again his face was impassive.

"I'll look a bit further," he told her. "Put out that lamp and lock the door again. I haven't seen anything, but you'll feel better."

She sat in the darkness, crouched and listening. There was no sound outside. After a time she could see, as she had in the bedroom, the faint rectangles which were the windows; she watched them, terrified, but that queer immobile outline did not return. Later on she crawled into bed for warmth, and sometime later, an hour or so, she heard him coming back. She admitted him, shivering. In the darkness he was a stranger to her, a big looming figure that