Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/234

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ifest self-control by pushing his chair in with nice precision. "You will regret this, Fay," he said reproachfully, and he walked out of the room with his head in the air.

Fay watched him, still terribly angry, but stricken with the realization that that was her husband who was walking away from her. It was appalling to think that he could do such a thing.

So they parted—and so they eventually went to bed—for the first time without a good-night kiss.

But George was restless and remorseful and couldn't sleep. Somewhere past midnight he tiptoed, pajama-clad, to his wife's bedside. The instreaming light of a brilliant moon revealed her position and her features—the position of a person stiffly awake; and he saw her eyes wide but unregarding; yet they had to see him—how he stood with mournful contrition in his pose and how humbly he stooped, lower and lower, till his lips touched her hand and kissed it in token of—of what?—submission—no; of affection and desire to be at peace.

Because she did not draw the hand away, but suffered his lips upon it, he argued that she was mollified, and shuffled gratefully back to bed without speaking a word. That she was mollified or relenting or even remorseful upon her own account seemed evident when she took pains