Page:Thunder on the Left (1925).djvu/207

 the broad open well of the stair the same tender void came drifting, floating, sinking. Summer night cannot be shut out: it is heavier than thin lamp-shine, it spreads along the floor, gathers beneath chairs, crowds up behind pictures, makes treacherous friendship with the gallant little red-headed bulbs.

She felt soft and ill. She felt her pliant body settling deeper into the thick cushion, her hands weighing inert upon her lap. She wished Ben and Ruth could be restful for a moment. Ruth was flitting about, looking at the furniture; Ben, though sitting quietly, kept blowing cigar smoke in a kind of rhythmical indignation. She could see his mind toiling, so plainly that she would not have been surprised to read words written in his spouts of smoke, as in the balloon issuing from the mouth of a comic drawing. If Mr. Martin would only say something. He had just come in from the garden, without a word, and sat expectantly at the foot of the stairs. He was outside the circle of light, she could not see him clearly, but he seemed to be looking at her with inquiry or reproach. For being such a dull hostess, probably.

But speech was impossible. Now, with eyes widened by terror and yearning, she was almost aware of the sleepy world that lies beneath the