“Patient? Yes. What else was there to be?” she rejoined with a faint smile, as he seated himself beside her, a little too near. “Oh, well ... of course! I understood all that, I hope you’ll believe. But mightn’t you at least have answered my letters--one or two of them?” She shook her head. “I couldn’t write.” “Not to anyone? Or not to me?” he queried, with ironic emphasis. “I wrote only the letters I had to--no others.” “Ah, I see.” He laughed slightly. “And you didn’t consider that letters to _me_ were among them?” She was silent, and he stood up and took a turn across the room. His face was redder than usual, and now and then a twitch passed over it. She saw that he felt the barrier of her crape, and that it left him baffled and resentful. A struggle was still perceptibly going on in him between his traditional standard of behaviour at such a meeting, and primitive impulses renewed by the memory of their last hours together. When he turned back and paused before her his ruddy flush had paled, and he stood there, frowning, uncertain, and visibly resenting the fact that she made him so. “You sit there like a stone!” he said. “I feel like a stone.” “Oh, come--!” She knew well enough what he was thinking: that the only way to bridge over such a bad beginning was to get the woman into your arms--and talk afterward. It was the classic move. He had done it dozens of times, no doubt, and was evidently asking himself why the deuce he couldn’t do it now.... But something in her look must have benumbed him. He sat down again beside her. “What you must have been through, dearest!” He waited and coughed. “I can understand your being--all broken up. But I know nothing; remember, I know nothing as to what actually happened....” “Nothing happened.” “As to--what we feared? No hint--?” She shook her head. He cleared his throat before the next question. “And you don’t think that in your absence he may have spoken--to anyone?” “Never!” “Then, my dear, we seem to have had the most unbelievable good luck; and I can’t see--” He had edged slowly nearer, and now laid a large ringed hand on her sleeve. How well she knew those rings--the two dull gold snakes with malevolent jewelled eyes! She sat as motionless as if their coils were about her, till slowly his tentative grasp relaxed. “Lizzie, you know”--his tone was discouraged--“this is morbid....” “Morbid?” “When you’re safe out of the worst scrape ... and free, my darling, _free_! Don’t you realize it? I suppose the strain’s been too much for you; but I want you to feel that now--” She stood up suddenly, and put half the length of the room between them. “Stop! Stop! Stop!” she almost screamed, as she had screamed long ago at Mrs. Mant. He stood up also, darkly red under his rich sunburn, and forced a smile. “Really,” he protested, “all things considered--and after a separation of six months!” She was silent. “My dear,” he continued mildly, “will you tell me what you expect me to think?”