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It seemed as if Alice, too, recognized that he had become another man, when he went down and took his chair at the breakfast table. They had exchanged no words since their parting in the depot-yard the previous evening an event now faded off into remote vagueness in Theron's mind.
One of the workmen fetched from the stove a brand, lighted the two candles, and bore the table with its contents into the bedroom. The young woman plucked Theron's sleeve, and he dumbly followed her into the chamber of death, making one of the group of a dozen, headed by Mrs. MacEvoy and her children, which filled the little room, and overflowed now outward to the street door.
The young minister took in the thought, and turned it about in his mind, and smiled upon it. "And that brings me to what I'm going to tell you," Sister Soulsby continued. She leaned back in her chair, and crossed her knees so that one well-shaped and artistically shod foot poised itself close to Theron's hand. Her eyes dwelt upon his face with an engaging candor.
He inclined his head in token of assent, and did not lift it again, but raised toward her a disconsolate gaze from a pallid, drooping face. "It is all in a single word, Mr. Ware," she proceeded, in low tones. "I speak for others as well as myself, mind you we find that you are a bore." Theron's stiffened countenance remained immovable. He continued to stare unblinkingly up into her eyes.
Deliberate as his progress was, the diminishing number of store-fronts along the sidewalk, and the increasing proportion of picket-fences enclosing domestic lawns, forced upon Theron's attention the fact that he was nearing home. It was a trifle past the hour for his midday meal.
"No you mustn't stand there," she added, sinking into the seat before the instrument; "go back and sit where you were." The most perfect of lullabies, with its swaying abandonment to cooing rhythm, ever and again rising in ripples to the point of insisting on something, one knows not what, and then rocking, melting away once more, passed, so to speak, over Theron's head.
"Come home with me, and I'll play Chopin to you," she said, in compassionate friendliness. "He is the real medicine for bruised and wounded nerves. You shall have as much of him as you like." The idea thus unexpectedly thrown forth spread itself like some vast and inexpressibly alluring vista before Theron's imagination.
It was a new experience to be addressed in that fashion. It occurred to him to add, "Please remember that I am not in the witness-box, to be bullied or insulted by a professional." Gorringe studied Theron's face attentively with a cold, searching scrutiny. "You may thank your stars you're not!" he said, with significance. What on earth could he mean?
The rest of the room was vague darkness; but the gloom seemed saturated with novel aromatic odors, the appetizing scent of which bore clear relation to what Theron's blinking eyes rested upon. He was able now to discern two figures at the table, outside the glowing circle of the lamp. They had both risen, and one came toward him with cordial celerity, holding out a white plump hand in greeting.
She rearranged her hat and the braids of her hair with swift, instinctive touches, brushed the woodland debris from her front, and sprang to her feet. "I'm all right now," she said briskly. There was palpable effort in her light tone, and in the stormy sort of smile which she forced upon her blotched and perturbed countenance, but they were only too welcome to Theron's anxious mood.
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