“Oh, then I must manage to meet her elsewhere.” He held Anna closer, saying to himself, as he smoothed back the hair from her forehead: “What does anything matter but just THIS?--Must I go now?” he added aloud. She answered absently: “It must be time to dress”; then she drew back a little and laid her hands on his shoulders. “My love--oh, my dear love!” she said. It came to him that they were the first words of endearment he had heard her speak, and their rareness gave them a magic quality of reassurance, as though no danger could strike through such a shield. A knock on the door made them draw apart. Anna lifted her hand to her hair and Darrow stooped to examine a photograph of Effie on the writing-table. “Come in!” Anna said. The door opened and Sophy Viner entered. Seeing Darrow, she drew back. “Do come in, Miss Viner,” Anna repeated, looking at her kindly. The girl, a quick red in her cheeks, still hesitated on the threshold. “I’m so sorry; but Effie has mislaid her Latin grammar, and I thought she might have left it here. I need it to prepare for tomorrow’s lesson.” “Is this it?” Darrow asked, picking up a book from the table. “Oh, thank you!” He held it out to her and she took it and moved to the door. “Wait a minute, please, Miss Viner,” Anna said; and as the girl turned back, she went on with her quiet smile: “Effie told us you’d gone to your room with a headache. You mustn’t sit up over tomorrow’s lessons if you don’t feel well.” Sophy’s blush deepened. “But you see I have to. Latin’s one of my weak points, and there’s generally only one page of this book between me and Effie.” She threw the words off with a half-ironic smile. “Do excuse my disturbing you,” she added. “You didn’t disturb me,” Anna answered. Darrow perceived that she was looking intently at the girl, as though struck by something tense and tremulous in her face, her voice, her whole mien and attitude. “You DO look tired. You’d much better go straight to bed. Effie won’t be sorry to skip her Latin.” “Thank you--but I’m really all right,” murmured Sophy Viner. Her glance, making a swift circuit of the room, dwelt for an appreciable instant on the intimate propinquity of arm-chair and sofa-corner; then she turned back to the door. BOOK III XVII At dinner that evening Madame de Chantelle’s slender monologue was thrown out over gulfs of silence. Owen was still in the same state of moody abstraction as when Darrow had left him at the piano; and even Anna’s face, to her friend’s vigilant eye, revealed not, perhaps, a personal preoccupation, but a vague sense of impending disturbance. She smiled, she bore a part in the talk, her eyes dwelt on Darrow’s with their usual deep reliance; but beneath the surface of her serenity his tense perceptions detected a hidden stir.