And he was here in this lover’s paradise—­this was what drew the tribute of a smile to the humor of the high gods—­with Paula.  And Paula was more ardently in love with him than she had ever been before.

The quality of that smile must have carried over to the one he gave her when she came back, well within her promised hour, from her walk.  One couldn’t imagine anything lovelier or more inviting than the picture she made framed in that doorway, coolly shaded against the bright blaze that came in around her.  She looked at him from there, for a moment, thoughtfully.

“I don’t believe you have missed me such a lot after all,” she said.  “What have you been doing all the while?”

“Crystal-gazing,” he told her.

She came over to him and took his hands, a caress patently enough through the nurse’s pretext that she was satisfying herself that he had not got cold sitting there.  She relinquished them suddenly, readjusted his rug and pillows, then kissed him and told him she was going to the office to see if there were any letters and went out again.  She was gone but a moment or two; returning, she dropped the little handful which were addressed to him into his lap and carried one of her own to a chair near the window.

He dealt idly with the congratulatory and well-wishing messages which made up his mail.  There was but one of them that drew even a gleam of clearly focused intelligence from him.  He gave most of his attention to Paula.  She was a wonderful person to watch,—­the expressiveness of her, that every nerve and muscle of her body seemed to have a part in.  She had opened that letter of hers with nothing but clear curiosity.  The envelope evidently had told her nothing.  She had frowned, puzzled, over the signature and then somehow, darkened, sprung to arms as she made it out.  She didn’t read it in an orderly way even then; seemed to be trying to worry the meaning out of it, like one stripping off husks to get down to some sort of kernel inside.  Satisfied that she had got it at last, she dropped the letter carelessly on the floor, subsided a little deeper into her chair and turned a brooding face toward the outdoor light and away from him.

“Are you crystal-gazing, too?” he asked.  Unusually, she didn’t turn at his voice and her own was monotonous with strongly repressed emotion.

“I don’t need to.  I spent more than a week staring into mine.”

That lead was plain enough, but he avoided, deliberately though rather idly, following it up.  The rustle of paper told her that he had turned back to his letters.

“Anything in your mail?” she asked.

“I think not.  You can look them over and see if I’ve missed anything.  To a man in my disarticulate situation people don’t write except to express the kindness of their hearts.  Here’s a letter from Mary designed to prevent me from worrying about her.  Full of pleasant little anecdotes about farm life.  It’s thoroughly Arcadian, she says.  A spot designed by Heaven for me to rusticate in this summer when—­when we go back to town.  Somehow, I never did inhabit Arcady.  There’s a letter from Martin Whitney, too, that’s almost alarmingly encouraging in its insistence that I mustn’t worry.  If only they knew how little I did—­these days!”