"I've finished type-writing that book," she announced obliquely.
"Have you? That's splendid! Will you bring it to me? And then we can
have a little talk."
She nodded--"I'll go fetch it right away"--and scurried hastily up the
stairs as he went on to his room.
Leaving the door ajar and lighting his reading-lamp, Matthias closed the
shutters at the long windows, adjusting their slats for ventilation.
Then for some minutes he was left to himself. Resting against the edge
of his work-table, he studied ruefully a cigarette which he was too
indifferent or too distracted to continue smoking. Smouldering between
his fingers, its slender stalk of pearly vapour ascended with hardly a
waver in the still air, to mushroom widely above his head. It held his
eyes and his thoughts in dreaming.
He was thinking, simply and unconsciously, of the Joan he had just
realized in the half-light of the hallway: a straight, slim creature
with eyes like troubled stars, her round little chin held high as if in
mute defiance of outrageous circumstance; vividly alive; giving a
strange impression, as of some half-wild thing, at once timid and
spirited, odd and--beautiful.
To the sound of a light tap on the open door, the girl herself entered,
a mute incarnation of that disturbing memory. She put down the
manuscript before acknowledging his silent and intent regard. But
becoming aware of this, her eyes wavered and fell, then again steadied
to his. He was vastly concerned with the surprising length of her dark
silken lashes and the delicate shadows on her warm, rich flesh. And he
was sensitive to the virginal sweetness and fluent grace of her round
and slender body. Vaguely he divined that the calm courage of her
bearing was merely a naïve mask for a nature racked by intense
feeling....
"That's the last," she said quietly, indicating the manuscript. "I
finished up this evening," she added, superfluously yet without any
evidence of consciousness.
"Thank you. I'm glad to get it." Ransacking his pockets, Matthias found
money, and paid her for the week.
"I suppose that'll be all?" she asked steadily. "I mean, you won't want
any more type-writing done for a while?"
"I don't know," he said slowly. "We'll have to ... talk things over.
Today has changed everything.... If you don't mind, I'll shut the door:
people all the time passing through the hall...."
She shook her head slightly to indicate a mild degree of impatience with
his punctiliousness about that blessed door. Unconscious of this, having
closed it, he returned to her, frowning a little as he reviewed her
circumstances with a mind that seemed suddenly to have lost its
customary efficiency of grasp.
He found her eyes and lost them again, glancing aside in inexplicable
embarrassment.
"I'm sorry," he said slowly, looking down at the manuscript she had just
delivered, and abstractedly disarranging it with thin, long
fingers--"awfully sorry about the way things have turned out. I--"