Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/304

 'Lanice,' he said, 'you are sure you are happy?'

'Yes.'

'You do not regret what you have given up?'

'I'll never have as nice a figure again.'

'No, no. I don't mean trifles like that. But you are a talented woman.'

She felt by the stiffness of his body that something worried him, and that he was about to speak of it.

'Ah, Lanice. This afternoon I went to your lower desk drawer to find, if I could, a map of Italy, and I found—instead—these.'

She opened her eyes listlessly and saw that he held in his thick hand the four stories that she had written in such delicious frenzy at Porlock Weir.

'Did you read them, Sears?'

'Yes.'

'You didn't like them?'

'No; they are hideous. How could you think up such things?'

'You always mistrust fiction.'

'I know, dear. It seems so exaggerated, so unimportant.'

'Well.' She knew that he realized that he held in his hand that part of her nature which he never had possessed, that part which had responded to Anthony. He was afraid of these dark, passionate, and powerful stories about satyrs gambling on the mud flats of Sjjalem, picking up mussels and throwing down the shells, and mortal women who loved devils and bore monsters, and little boys driven into ecstasy by the nymphs in the birch trees by the brook.