crossed the floor again. It was strange how much better he knew
it than the person to whom it belonged! Now it was drawing near the door
of communication between the two rooms. He opened his eyes and looked.
The step had ceased and for a moment there was silence. Then he heard
a low knock. He made no response, and after an interval he saw that
the door handle was being tentatively turned. He closed his eyes once
more...

The door opened, and the step was in the room, coming cautiously toward
him. He kept his eyes shut, relaxing his body to feign sleep. There
was another pause, then a wavering soft advance, the rustle of a dress
behind his chair, the warmth of two hands pressed for a moment on his
lids. The palms of the hands had the lingering scent of some stuff that
he had bought on the Boulevard...He looked up and saw a letter falling
over his shoulder to his knee...

"Did I disturb you? I'm so sorry! They gave me this just now when I came
in."

The letter, before he could catch it, had slipped between his knees to
the floor. It lay there, address upward, at his feet, and while he sat
staring down at the strong slender characters on the blue-gray envelope
an arm reached out from behind to pick it up.

"Oh, don't--DON'T" broke from him, and he bent over and caught the arm.
The face above it was close to his.

"Don't what?"

----"take the trouble," he stammered.

He dropped the arm and stooped down. His grasp closed over the letter,
he fingered its thickness and weight and calculated the number of sheets
it must contain.

Suddenly he felt the pressure of the hand on his shoulder, and became
aware that the face was still leaning over him, and that in a moment he
would have to look up and kiss it...

He bent forward first and threw the unopened letter into the middle of
the fire.

BOOK II

IX

The light of the October afternoon lay on an old high-roofed house which
enclosed in its long expanse of brick and yellowish stone the breadth of
a grassy court filled with the shadow and sound of limes.

From the escutcheoned piers at the entrance of the court a level drive,
also shaded by limes, extended to a white-barred gate beyond which
an equally level avenue of grass, cut through a wood, dwindled to a
blue-green blur against a sky banked with still white slopes of cloud.

In the court, half-way between house and drive, a lady stood. She held
a parasol above her head, and looked now at the hou