Her eyes were fixed in thought, her lips pinched. Was it only now, or had he never noticed it before, that her hands resembled her face, bony with a dry fine skin? Perhaps, heroically, she was thrusting the whole subject of Savina Grove from her mind; he couldn't tell; her exterior showed Lee Randon nothing, He waited, undecided if he'd smoke. Lee didn't, he found, want to. She shook her head, a startled look passed through her eyes, and Fanny sighed deeply. She seemed to come back from a far place. It was, of course, the past, her early aspirations; herself, young; but what, out of her remembrance, had she brought with her?
Her first words instantly dispelled what had many aspects of his last hope for peace. “It is surprising to me that you could go up to the children; but I suppose we must all be glad to have you pay attention to them at any time.” This minor development he succeeded in avoiding. “I have been thinking hard,” she continued, “and I have made up my mind about you; it is this--you just simply have to be different. I won't let you, us, stay like this. It is hideous.”
“You are quite right,” he admitted; “and I have already agreed that the change must principally be in me. If you'd explain it to me, what you have decided on, we'll find out, if possible, how to go about it.”
“At least you needn't be sarcastic,” she replied; “I am not as impossible as you make out. You will have to be different at home--”
“I thought it was outside home you objected to.”
“It's one and the same,” she went on; “and I won't have them, it, a minute longer. Not a minute! You have got to behave yourself.”
“Mrs. Grove--Savina,” she flung back at him.
“It's a fact that you kissed her.” Fanny leaned forward, flushed and tense, knocking over her stool. “And that you put your arms around her, and said--oh, I don't know what you did say. Did she mention me?”
“Only indirectly,” he replied with a gleam of malice; “neither of us did.”
“I am glad of that anyhow.” But her vindictive tone betrayed the words. “Although I can easily guess why you didn't--you were ashamed. You did kiss her; why won't you admit it?”
“What's the good? You've done that for me. You have convinced yourself so positively that nothing I could say would be of any use.”