an
expression of inquiry. He laid his hand on the corner of the piano,
and his eyes rested on the shaded lamp as if it attracted him.
Perhaps he wondered why he had nothing to say to her, and why she was
unwilling to help the conversation a little, since her new part might
be supposed to furnish matter for a few commonplace phrases. The smoky
sunset was fading outside and the room was growing dark.

'When do the rehearsals begin?' he asked after a long interval, and as
if he was quite indifferent to the answer.

'When Stromboli comes, I suppose.'

Margaret turned on the piano stool, so as to face the desk, and she
quietly closed the open score and laid it on the little table on her
other side, as if not caring to talk of it any more, but she did not
turn to him again.

'You had a great success in New York,' he said, after some time.

To this she answered nothing, but she shrugged her shoulders a little,
and though he was not looking directly at her he saw the movement,
and was offended by it. Such a little shrug was scarcely a breach of
manners, but it was on the verge of vulgarity in his eyes, because
he was persuaded that she had begun to change for the worse. He had
already told himself that her way of speaking was not what it had been
last year, and he felt that if the change went on she would set
his teeth on edge some day; and that he was growing more and more
sensitive, while she was continually becoming less so.

Margaret could not have understood that, and would have been hurt if
he had tried to explain it. She was disappointed, because his letters
had made her think that she was going to find him just as she had left
him, as indeed he had been till the moment when he saw her after her
arrival; but then he had changed at once. He had been disappointed
then, as she was now, and chilled, as she was now; he had felt that he
was shrinking from her then, as she now shrank from him. He suffered a
good deal in his quiet way, for he had never known any woman who had
moved him as she once had; but she suffered too, and in a much more
resentful way. Two years of maddening success had made her very sure
that she had a prime right to anything she wanted--within reason! If
she let him alone he would sit out his half-hour's visit, making an
idle remark now and then, and he would go away; but she would not let
him do that. It was too absurd that after a long and affectionate
intimacy they should sit there in the soft