Page:The Prussian officer, and other stories, Lawrence, 1914.djvu/216

 was extinguished. She looked at him. Her eyes were cold and hostile. His workman’s hands spread on the panels of the door behind him.

“You know I used to live here?” she began, in a hard voice, as if wilfully to wound him. He braced himself against her, and nodded.

“Well, I was companion to Miss Birch of Torril Hall—she and the rector were friends, and Archie was the rector’s son.” There was a pause. He listened without knowing what was happening. He stared at his wife. She was squatted in her white dress on the bed, carefully folding and refolding the hem of her skirt. Her voice was full of hostility.

“He was an officer—a sub-lieutenant—then he quarrelled with his colonel and came out of the army. At any rate”—she plucked at her skirt hem, her husband stood motionless, watching her movements which filled his veins with madness—“he was awfully fond of me, and I was of him—awfully.”

“How old was he?” asked the husband.

“When?—when I first knew him? or when he went away?——”

“When you first knew him.”

“When I first knew him, he was twenty-six—now—he’s thirty-one—nearly thirty-two—because I’m twenty-nine, and he is nearly three years older——”

She lifted her head and looked at the opposite wall.

“And what then?” said her husband.

She hardened herself, and said callously: