"I'd rather you bothered about
your sister."
"Which sister?"
For the life of her she could not tell what had made her say that. The
words seemed to leap out suddenly from her mind to her tongue.
"Alice," he said.
"Was it Alice we were talking about?"
"It was Alice I was thinking about."
"Was it?"
Again her mind took its insane possession of her tongue.
* * * * *
The evening dragged on. The two chairs still faced each other, pushed
forward in their attitude of polite attention and expectancy.
But the persons in the chairs leaned back as if each withdrew as far
as possible from the other. They made themselves stiff and upright as
if they braced themselves, each against the other in the unconscious
tension of hostility. And they were silent, each thinking an
intolerable thought.
Rowcliffe had taken up a book and was pretending to read it. Mary's
hands were busy with her knitting. Her needles went with a rapid jerk,
driven by the vibration of her irritated nerves. From time to time she
glanced at Rowcliffe under her bent brows. She saw the same blocks of
print, a deep block at the top, a short line under it, then a narrower
block. She saw them as vague, meaningless blurs of gray stippled on
white. She saw that Rowcliffe's eyes never moved from the deep top
paragraph on the left-hand page. She noted the light pressure of his
thumbs on the margins.
He wasn't reading at all; he was only pretending to read.
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