Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/74

 find room for you. If the house gets too full of noisy kids you can beat a retreat, the way poor father does, and be like the dove, at rest. . . Now I'm off. I have a horrid sort of feeling that I interrupted an important discussion about Life and such. I'm sorry."

That she genuinely was sorry was evident to Grover in the ring of her voice, just before she turned and vanished. Rhoda was not lacking in intuition, and he could imagine her hurrying back to Alcie's, locking herself in her room, and weeping: first at the discovery of some deep entente with Sophie; second at the belated realization of her own maladdress in dwelling upon Mme. Janvier's liaison, with the grotesque but ineffaceable analogy it implied,—Potiphar's wife and Joseph, George Sand and de Musset, Sophie and himself. Most disquieting of all was Sophie's white face. There was a hint of horror upon it. He himself felt as though every bit of courage and hope had been drained from him. He was numb and rigid, and his limbs ached as though they were braced for the assault of all the troubles that had been lying in ambush for him.

He sat down in an armchair opposite Sophie and reached for her hand. It was lifeless. Sophie tried to say something, but her voice stuck. She swallowed and tried again. "I never quite realized before that you—that Rhoda and you—"

"That we what?"

Sophie had shrunk into a cold little effigy of herself.