Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/128

 hands were trembling. When he was by her side, she leant her left hand with the letter in it on the table, and smoothed down something in her dress with the right hand, thus keeping both her hands occupied. He could not have failed to feel them trembling if he had touched them.

‘You’ve had a letter?’ asked Ivan, pointing to the envelope which peeped out from beneath her fingers; he bent down to kiss her.

Every drop of blood ebbed from her face when her lips met those of her husband; her half-extinguished ‘Yes ’ was lost in her kiss.

‘From home?’ he continued, looking at the stamp, ‘what news?’

Involuntarily he stretched out his hand for the letter. At that moment Mrs Hron felt as though she must run away or throw herself out of the window, but if she would avoid a catastrophe she must do nothing to rouse his suspicion. Her fingers painfully unclasped, but leant the more heavily on the table.

Hron took up the letter.

‘That looks like a weekly review,’ he sald good-humouredly, feeling it with his fingers, ‘have you read it?’ He half pulled the letter from the envelope, and recognized his mother-in-law’s handwriting.