“I can’t understand it,” he said, nervously.  “If they left New York by six, or even seven, they should have been here by eleven at the latest.  That would have given them time for slow going or taking a circuitous route.”

He rose nervously from his seat, interviewed the clerk at the desk, went out on the terrace, listened in the silence, walked restlessly up and down, and, returning to Diane, enumerated the different possibilities that would reasonably account for the delay.  Glad of this preoccupation, since it diverted thought from their more personal relations, she pointed out the wisdom of accepting whatever explanation was least grave until they knew the certainty.  When he had gone out several times more, to listen on the terrace, he came back, and, resuming his seat, said, brusquely: 

“You look tired.  You ought to get some rest.”

The tone of intimate care reached Diane’s heart more directly than words of greater import.

“I would,” she said, simply—­“that is, I’d go to my room if I thought you’d be kind to Dorothea when she came.”

“And don’t you think so?”

“I think you’d want to be,” she smiled, “if you knew how.”

“But I shouldn’t know how?”

“You see, it’s a situation that calls directly for a woman; and you’re so essentially a man.  When Dorothea arrives, she won’t be a headstrong, runaway girl; she’ll be a poor little terrified child, frightened to death at what she has done, and wanting nothing so much as to creep sobbing into her mother’s arms and be comforted.  If you could only—­”

“I’ll do anything you tell me.”

“It’s no use telling; you have to know.  It’s a case in which you must act by instinct, and not by rule of thumb.”

In her eagerness to have something to say which would keep conversation away from dangerous themes, she spoke exhaustively on the subject of parental tact, holding well to the thread of her topic until she perceived that he was not so much listening to what she said as thinking of her.  But she had gained her point, and led him to see that Dorothea was to be treated leniently, which was sufficient for the moment.

“Now,” she finished, rising, “I think I’ll take your advice, and go and rest till she comes.  That’s my door, just opposite.  I chose the room for its convenience in receiving Dorothea.  You’ll be sure to call me, won’t you, the minute you hear the sound of wheels?”

He had sat gazing up at her, but now he, too, rose.  It was a minute at which their common anxiety regarding Dorothea slipped temporarily into the background, allowing the main question at issue between them to assert itself; but it asserted itself silently.  He had meant to speak, but he could only look.  She had meant to withdraw, but she remained to return his look with the lingering, quiet, steady gaze which time and place and circumstance seemed to make the most natural mode of expression for the things that