Durlacher turned her gaze to
the window, looked far away across the stretch of fields ploughed
and green, beyond the blue, rising land that lifts above Wycombe,
into that distance which holds all the intricate mysteries of a
woman's being. When a woman looks like this, a man strains eyes to
follow her. He realizes all the distance, but cannot with his utmost
effort decipher what it contains. And that very inability in him is
the strongest weapon that she holds. He sees the distance, yet there
is none. No wonder that he cannot discern its contents. There is no
distance. She is looking inwards--not outwards; searching her own
mind, searching his, and only playing the game of contemplation to
hide what she has found.
When Traill saw that expression of her face, he dropped the note of
brass from his voice.
"Why?" he asked again, almost gently.
Her lips bound tight together as though she were keeping back her
confession; her nostrils dilated, checking tears.
"I wanted to see you--that's all."
She said it with a shrug of the shoulders--the motion with which you
shake an unwelcome thought from your mind.
He pressed her further. "But you apparently knew I was bringing some
one?" he said.
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