Alice moved upon her pillow in impatient disapproval. "I hope you’ll have a good time to-night."
MacBirney was ready and Fritzie joined him. The house grew quiet after they left. Annie brought up a tray and Alice took a cup of broth. She did not long resist the drowsiness that followed. She thought vaguely for a moment of a prayer for safety. But her married life had long excluded prayer. What good could come of praying to be kept unharmed while living in a state that had in itself driven her from prayer? That, at least, would be too absurd, and with a dull fear gnawing and dying alternately at her heart she fell asleep.
At noon next day MacBirney, seeking his wife, found her in her dressing-room. She had come from the garden and stood before a table filled with flowers, which she was arranging in vases.
"I’ve been looking for you." MacBirney threw himself into a convenient chair as he spoke. "Robert Kimberly is downstairs."
"To see _me_?" Alice with flowers in her hand, paused. Then she carried a vase to the mantel-piece. "At this time of day?"
She returned to the table. "What in the world does he want to see us about?"
MacBirney laughed. "He says he has something to say to both of us. I told him I would bring you down."
A breath would have toppled Alice over. "I can’t dress to go down now," she managed to say. "It may be something from Dolly. Ask him to give you any message he has."
Walking hurriedly to the mantel with another jar of roses, she found her fear extreme. Could it be possible Kimberly would dream of saying to her husband what he had said to her yesterday? She smothered at the thought, yet she knew his appalling candor and felt unpleasantly convinced that he was capable of repeating every word of it. The idea threw her into a panic. She resolved not to face him under such circumstances; she was in no position to do so. "Tell him," she said abruptly, "that as much as I should like to hear what he has to say, he will have to excuse me this morning."
"He offered to come this evening if you preferred."
"We have other guests to-night," returned Alice coldly. "And I can’t be bothered now."
"Bothered?" echoed MacBirney with sarcasm. "Perhaps I had better tell him that."
