Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/345

 the furnishings of the room became grotesquely twisted, and she knew that her eyes had filled with tears.

She looked down at her ringless hand. She knew now why he had taken off the rings. The singular thoughtfulness of the act! He was a man, strong in the body and strong in the soul. He had the strength, the moral strength, to let her go!

Timidly—for her initial boldness was gone now—she approached the table. Propped against some books books—he was reading to please her—she saw the photograph she had given him in Venice. And there was his pipe. She took it up. She turned it about in her hands. She saw where his strong teeth had worn away the stem. She studied it, not because she was particularly interested in the pipe itself, but because it suggested intimacy; it was almost as if she were touching the man himself. And he was a man.

Suddenly she smiled; and when a woman smiles like that there is either an epic or an idyl in the air. The epic in this instance had already been written.

As she laid down the pipe he came in, and halted by the door in his astonishment.

"Where have you been?" she questioned, with a nod toward the untouched bed.

"Why, I couldn't sleep in here last night; too muggy. So I spent the night over on the grass-plot down by the sea. Slept like a top. And how do you feel this morning?"

"I'm a good deal better."