Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/384

382 and burnt matches which Basil had left. Then she looked out at him again, irresolute. Basil was capable, she knew, of sulking for a week straight on. It was not now as it had been in the first years of their marriage, when any constraint between them was more pain to him than to herself, when he was always the first to insist on an understanding. But—this was not an ordinary case of sulking. At luncheon he had eaten almost nothing and his eyes looked as though he had not slept. He was suffering.

After a little, she put a white scarf over her head and shoulders and went out to him. He looked at her with that same sombre expression, and when she slipped her hand through his arm he drew away.

"Basil, aren't you making too much of this?" she asked, walking on beside him.

"No," he said curtly.

"It seems to me you are putting on tragedy-airs without much reason."

"Does it?"

"You are trying to bully me."

He made an impatient gesture.

"I'm not. You can do as you damn please. Apparently you have done so. Only if you think it's going to make no difference"

"What difference?"

"Just this—that we won't live together any more."