Page:The Prussian officer, and other stories, Lawrence, 1914.djvu/210

 “I haven’t got any tobacco,” he said thoughtfully.

But she paid no heed to his words, only she attended to him. Could he recognize her, or was it all gone? She sat still in a frozen kind of suspense.

“I smoke John Cotton,” he said, “and I must economize with it, it is expensive. You know, I’m not very well off while these law suits are going on.”

“No,” she said, and her heart was cold, her soul kept rigid.

He moved, made a loose salute, rose, and went away. She sat motionless. She could see his shape, the shape she had loved with all her passion: his compact, soldier’s head, his fine figure now slackened. And it was not he. It only filled her with horror too difficult to know.

Suddenly he came again, his hand in his jacket pocket.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” he said. “Perhaps I shall be able to see things more clearly.”

He sat down beside her again, filling a pipe. She watched his hands with the fine strong fingers. They had always inclined to tremble slightly. It had surprised her, long ago, in such a healthy man. Now they moved inaccurately, and the tobacco hung raggedly out of the pipe.

“I have legal business to attend to. Legal affairs are always so uncertain. I tell my solicitor exactly, precisely what I want, but I can never get it done.”

She sat and heard him talking. But it was not he. Yet those were the hands she had kissed, there