"Do you know," she said to him suddenly--they had been talking but little that night--"I have never yet once called you by your Christian name! John! How that sounds like you: substantial, solid, dignified! No; I have never dared. I believe I am still afraid of you--John!"
He made her say it over a dozen times. She repeated the name until it seemed to fall to pieces on her tongue, and lose all meaning. Then she sighed heavily.
"I'm tired!" she murmured, locking her fingers behind her head. He noticed an unlooked-for fulness about the round, tower-like neck that seemed to sigh into the white breadth of the shoulders like a river into its sea.
"Cordelia, you _are_ tired," he repeated suddenly: and he moved as though to rise from his chair. A frightened look shot into her face. She wondered for a moment if he would have the heart to leave her there, so soon, so unsatisfied, and without a sign. She dreaded the thought of the solitude that would come after he had gone, the thought of that last night of what she must soon call her old life.
"I wonder if you know how tired I am?" she murmured absently, pushing back her sleeves and leaning forward with her elbows on the table.
"I wonder if you can imagine how heavily I'll sleep to-night, and how tired I shall get up, even, in the morning?"
He rose from his chair, and walking round to the side of the table where she sat, stood behind her without speaking. She could feel the caress of his hand on her thick hair.
"I feel as though I'd like to be mothered to-night by some one!" she murmured softly, as her eyelids drooped.
He still touched her hair, almost reverently, but that was all.
Then she turned to him with the smile of a tired child.
"Lift me up--I want you to lift me up, and carry me over to my couch!"
He lifted her in his arms as he might a child of three, and as he did so the memory of another night when he had first done the same thing rushed back through his mind; and without a word he carried her to the little Japanese couch beside her writing-desk of gold and mother-of-pearl. He found a rug and covered her feet.
She gazed up at him with lips that appeared to pout girlishly.
"Do you want to sleep now?" he asked gently, bending over her.