Here was her shopping list, a little wet and crumpled because she had
put her glove on the snowy handle of the motor-car door. Mary had said
that it would be a white Christmas--how could Mary tell?--this was only
the eighteenth, only the eighteenth--ridiculous to be panting this way,
like a runner. Nothing was going to hurt her--
"Anything--anything!" she said to the waiter, with dry, bloodless lips,
and a ghastly attempt at a smile. "Yes, that will do. Thank you, yes, I
suppose so. Yes, if you will. Thank you. That will do nicely."
And now she must be quiet. That was the main thing now. They must not
see her. She had been shopping, and now she was having her lunch in the
Grill. If she could only breathe a little less violently--but she
seemed to have no control over her heaving breast, she could not even
close her mouth. Nobody suspected anything, and if she could but
control herself, nobody would, she told herself desperately.
She never knew that the silent, gray-haired waiter recognized her, and
recognized both the man and woman who sat only thirty feet away. She
had not ordered coffee, but he brought her a smoking pot. It was not
the first time he had encountered the situation. Rachael drank the
vivifying fluid, and her nerves responded at once.
She sat up, set her lips firmly, forced herself to dispose of gloves
and napkin in the usual way. Her breath was coming more evenly--so much
was gained. As for this deadly cold and quivering sensation of nausea,
that was no more than fatigue and the frightfully cold wind.
So it was Magsie. Rachael had not been seven years a wife to misread
Warren's eyes as he looked at the girl. No woman could misread their
attitude together, an attitude of wonderful, sweet familiarity with
each other's likes and dislikes under all its thrilling newness.
Rachael had seen him turn that very glance, that smiling-eyed yet
serious look--
Oh, God! it could not be that he had come to care for Magsie! Her
hard-won calm was shattered in a second, she was panting and quivering
again. Her husband, her own big, tender, clever Warren--but he was
hers, and the boys--he was HERS! Her husband--and this other woman was
looking at him with all her soul in her eyes, this other woman
cared--all the world might see how she cared for him--and was loved in
return!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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