She said it with her mouth full, her elbows on the table, and only that other look in the watchful eyes seemed to contradict the awkward, untaught body. There was a flash of tenderness and passion in them, a pathetic questioning and wonder, as though she saw in her husband’s act an acknowledgment of dim forebodings in her own deep heart. She appealed, it seemed, to me. Was it that she divined he was already slipping from her, farewells all unsaid, yet that she was--inarticulate? ... The entire little scene, the words, the laughter and the look, were but evidence of an attempt to lift the mask. Her choice of words, their accent and pronunciation, that fountain pen, the endorsement, the stupid remark about myself--were all these lifted by those yearning eyes into the tragedy of a fateful good-bye message? ... More significant still, though even less direct, was another moment--when the Man stretched his arm across the table to turn the lamp up. For in this unnecessary act she saw--the intuition came sharply to me--an effect of the approaching Powers upon his untutored soul. The wick was already high enough when, with an abrupt, impulsive movement, he stooped to turn it higher; and instantly Mrs. LeVallon was on her feet, her face first pale, then hotly flushed. She rose as though to strike him, then changed the gesture as if to ward a blow--almost to protect. It was an impetuous, revealing act. Out of some similar impulse, too, only half understood, I sprang to her assistance. “There’s light enough,” I exclaimed. “And heat,” she added quickly. “Good Lord! the room’s that hot, it’s like a furnace!” She flashed a look of gratitude at me. What exactly was in her mind I cannot know, but in my own was the strange feeling that the less _visible_ fire in the air the better. An expression of perplexed alarm showed itself in the face of the faithful but inarticulate serving man. Unwittingly he had blundered. His distress was acute. I almost thought he would drop to his knees and lick his mistress’s hand for forgiveness. Whether Julius perceived all this is hard to say. He looked up calmly, watching us; but the glance he gave, and the fact that he spoke no word, made me think he realised what the energy of her tone and gesture veiled. The desire to assist the increase of heat, of fire--co-operation--had acted upon the physical medium least able to resist--the most primitive system present. The approach of the two Activities affected us, one and all. There were other incidents of a similar kind before the meal was over, quite ordinary in themselves, yet equally revealing; my interpretation of them due to this enhanced condition of acute perception that pertained to awakening memory. Air and fire accumulated, flake by flake. A kind of radiant heat informed all common objects. It was in our hearts as well. And wind was waiting to blow it into flame. CHAPTER XXIX