Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/366

364 an idea of this occasion. Basil studied her face with keen attention.

"You look younger—you look awfully strong and well—it has done you a lot of good. It's too bad to pull you back into this heat—we must get out of town to-morrow. You haven't told me what made you decide so suddenly to come back," he said abruptly.

"Because I wanted to—I was bored there. Are you put out with me for coming so soon?" "Am I? Did I want you to go? Did I, Teresa?"

"No. But you might have got used to my being away. You look at me as though I'd been gone a year."

"And it seems to me you have. You seem strange to me, Teresa."

"That's it! That's the very way you look at me—as though I were a stranger! You'd forgotten me."

"Forgotten you!"

"Yes, you were forgetting me—if I'd stayed a few months longer, you'd have forgotten how I look! It's true—you said so yourself."

"I didn't. I said you seem strange, and you do. It's as though you were a person that I must begin to know all over again. Don't you like that? Would you rather have me feel that I know you like a book, like an old hat? Drink some of that white wine."