’Were they obliged to be so rough?’
’She refused to go. I don’t think they -were any rougher than they could help.’
’It was horrible to see a woman treated like that. She had a baby in her arms.’
’Hardly a baby. It’s three years old.’ ’How d’you know?’
’I know all about her. She hasn’t the least right to come here pestering everybody.’
’What does she want?’
’She wants to do exactly -what she did. She wants to make a disturbance’
For a little while Doris did not speak. She was surprised at her husband’s tone- He spoke tersely. He spoke as though all this were no concern of hers. She thought him a little unkind. He was nervous and irritable
’I doubt if -we shall be able to play tennis this afternoon,’ he said. ’It looks to me as though -we were going to have a storm.’ The rain was falling -when she awoke and it was impossible to go out. During tea Guy was silent and abstracted. She got her sewing and began to work. Guy sat down to read such of the English papers as he had not yet gone through from cover to cover; but he was restless; he walked up and down the large room and then -went out on the veranda. He looked at the steady rain. What was he thinking of? Doris was vaguely uneasy.
It was not till after dinner that he spoke. During the simple meal he had exerted Himself to be his usual gay self, ’but the exertion -was apparent. The rain had ceased and the night was starry. They sat on the veranda. In order not to attract insects they had put out the lamp in the sitting-room. At their feet, with a mighty, formidable sluggishness, silent, mysterious, and fatal, flowed the river. It had the terrible deliberation and the relentlessness of destiny.
’Doris, I’ve got something to say to you,’ he said suddenly. His voice -was very strange. Was it her fancy that he had difficulty in keeping it quite steady? She felt a Little pang in her heart because he was in distress, and she put her hand gently into his. He drew it away.