Page:The Prussian officer, and other stories, Lawrence, 1914.djvu/138

 He was in his pit dirt when he opened the door.

“I have been wanting to call—I thought I would,” she said, and she went to the sofa. He wondered why she wouldn’t use his mother’s round arm-chair. Yet something stirred in him, like anger, when the housekeeper placed herself in it.

“I ought to have been washed by now,” he said, glancing at the clock, which was adorned with butterflies and cherries, and the name of “T. Brooks, Mansfield.” He laid his black hands along his mottled dirty arms. Louisa looked at him. There was the reserve, and the simple neutrality towards her, which she dreaded in him. It made it impossible for her to approach him.

“I am afraid,” she said, “that I wasn’t kind in asking you to supper.”

“I’m not used to it,” he said, smiling with his mouth, showing the interspaced white teeth. His eyes, however, were steady and unseeing.

“It’s not that,” she said hastily. Her repose was exquisite and her dark grey eyes rich with understanding. He felt afraid of her as she sat there, as he began to grow conscious of her.

“How do you get on alone?” she asked.

He glanced away to the fire.

“Oh——” he answered, shifting uneasily, not finishing his answer.

Her face settled heavily.

“How close it is in this room. You have such immense fires. I will take off my coat,” she said.

He watched her take off her hat and coat. She wore a cream cashmir blouse embroidered with gold silk. It seemed to him a very fine garment, fitting