Presently another step sounded on the stairs, wavered a moment and then moved past the threshold of the study. Darrow got up and walked into the hall, which was still unlighted. In the dimness he saw Sophy Viner standing by the hall door in her hat and jacket. She stopped at sight of him, her hand on the door-bolt, and they stood for a second without speaking.
“Have you seen Effie?” she suddenly asked. “She went out to meet you.”
“She did meet me, just now, in the court. She’s gone on to join her brother.”
Darrow spoke as naturally as he could, but his voice sounded to his own ears like an amateur actor’s in a “light” part.
Miss Viner, without answering, drew back the bolt. He watched her in silence as the door swung open; then he said: “She has her nurse with her. She won’t be long.”
She stood irresolute, and he added: “I was writing in there –won’t you come and have a little talk? Every one’s out.”
The last words struck him as not well-chosen, but there was no time to choose. She paused a second longer and then crossed the threshold of the study. At luncheon she had sat with her back to the window, and beyond noting that she had grown a little thinner, and had less colour and vivacity, he had seen no change in her; but now, as the lamplight fell on her face, its whiteness startled him.
“Poor thing…poor thing…what in heaven’s name can she suppose?” he wondered.
“Do sit down-I want to talk to you,” he said and pushed a chair toward her.
She did not seem to see it, or, if she did, she deliberately chose another seat. He came back to his own chair and leaned his elbows on the blotter. She faced him from the farther side of the table.
“You promised to let me hear from you now and then,” he began awkwardly, and with a sharp sense of his awkwardness.
A faint smile made her face more tragic. “Did I? There was nothing to tell. I’ve had no history–like the happy countries…”
He waited a moment before asking: “You are happy here?”
“I WAS,” she said with a faint emphasis.
“Why do you say ‘was’? You’re surely not thinking of going? There can’t be kinder people anywhere.” Darrow hardly knew what he was saying; but her answer came to him with deadly definiteness.
“I suppose it depends on you whether I go or stay.”
“On me?” He stared at her across Owen’s scattered papers. “Good God! What can you think of me, to say that?”
The mockery of the question flashed back at him from her wretched face. She stood up, wandered away, and leaned an instant in the darkening window-frame. From there she turned to fling back at him: “Don’t imagine I’m the least bit sorry for anything!”
He steadied his elbows on the table and hid his face in his hands. It was harder, oh, damnably harder, than he had expected! Arguments, expedients, palliations, evasions, all seemed to be slipping away from him: he was left face to face with the mere graceless fact of his inferiority. He lifted his head to ask at random: “You’ve been here, then, ever since?”
“Since June; yes. It turned out that the Farlows were hunting for me–all the while–for this.”
She stood facing him, her back to the window, evidently impatient to be gone, yet with something still to say, or that she expected to hear him say. The sense of her expectancy benumbed him. What in heaven’s name could he say to her that was not an offense or a mockery?
“Your idea of the theatre–you gave that up at once, then?”
“Oh, the theatre!” She gave a little laugh. “I couldn’t wait for the theatre. I had to take the first thing that offered; I took this.”
He pushed on haltingly: “I’m glad–extremely glad–you’re happy here…I’d counted on your letting me know if there was anything I could do…The theatre, now–if you still regret it–if you’re not contented here…I know people in that line in London–I’m certain I can manage it for you when I get back—-“