Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/173

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WITH RED HAIR
169

to myself and my son. However, she is very young and a little time will alter that, I have no doubt. Especially as we shall be in foreign countries and to some extent alone by ourselves."

Harkness pressed his hands tightly together. A little shiver ran, as though it responded to the draught that blew through the room, up and down his body. He was anxious that Crispin should not notice that he was shivering.

"Have you any idea where you will go?" he asked—and his voice sounded strangely unlike his own, as though some third person were in the room and speaking just behind him.

"We have no idea," said Crispin, smiling. "That will depend on many things. On Mrs. Crispin herself of course amongst others. A young wife must not show too complete an independence. After all, there are others whose feelings must be considered——" He was smiling as it were to himself and as though his thoughts were pleasant ones.

Suddenly he sprang up and began to walk the room. The effect on Harkness was strange—it was as though he were suddenly shut in there with an animal. So often in zoological gardens he had seen that haunting monotonous movement, that encounter with the bars of the cage and the indifferent acceptance of their inevitability, indifferent only because of endless repetition. Crispin, padding now up and down the long room, reminded Harkness of one of