"Papa, what's the good of harping on that," she remonstrated no louder.
"He is kind."
"And you went and . . . married him so that he should be kind to me. Is
that it? How did you know that I wanted anybody to be kind to me?"
"How strange you are!" she said thoughtfully.
"It's hard for a man who has gone through what I have gone through to
feel like other people. Has that occurred to you? . . . " He looked up
at last . . . "Mrs. Anthony, I can't bear the sight of the fellow." She
met his eyes without flinching and he added, "You want to go to him now."
His mild automatic manner seemed the effect of tremendous
self-restraint--and yet she remembered him always like that. She felt
cold all over.
"Why, of course, I must go to him," she said with a slight start.
He gnashed his teeth at her and she went out.
Anthony had not moved from the spot. One of his hands was resting on the
table. She went up to him, stopped, then deliberately moved still
closer. "Thank you, Roderick."
"You needn't thank me," he murmured. "It's I who . . . "
"No, perhaps I needn't. You do what you like. But you are doing it
well."
He sighed then hardly above a whisper because they were near the state-
room door, "Upset, eh?"
She made no sign, no sound of any kind. The thorough falseness of the
position weighed on them both. But he was the braver of the two. "I
dare say. At first. Did you think of telling him you were happy?"
"He never asked me," she smiled faintly at him. She was disappointed by
his quietness. "I did not say more than I was absolutely obliged to
say--of myself." She was beginning to be irritated with this man a
little. "I told him I had been very lucky," she said suddenly
despondent, missing Anthony's masterful manner, that something arbitrary
and tender which, after the first scare, she had accustomed herself to
look forward to with pleasurable apprehension. He was contemplating her
rather blankly. She had not taken off her outdoor things, hat, gloves.
She was like a caller. And she had a movement suggesting the end of a
not very satisfactory business call. "Perhaps it would be just as well
if we went ashore. Time yet."
He gave her a glimpse of his unconstrained self in the low vehement "You
dare!" which sprang to his lips and out of them with a most menacing
inflexion.