“But there’s no need to,” said Sally, quickly.  “I think it’s very kind of you to take the interest that you do.  And I suppose”—­her eyes roamed plaintively round the room, rather than at that moment meet his; “I suppose I should have told you without your asking.”

“Why?” he leaned a little forward.

“I don’t know.  Because I wanted to, I expect.”

Her eyes fell to the table.  She made tiny pellets of bread between her fingers and placed them one by one in a row, knowing that his eyes were searching through her.  In that little moment, the silence vibrated with the current of their thoughts.  Traill pulled himself together—­laying hand upon anything that came within his reach.

“Look at this knife,” he said in a dry voice, picking up the nearest to him.  “Ever seen such a handle? it’s shrunk in the wash.”  The bone handle of it was bent round, twisted like a ram’s horn.  “I generally get this about once a week.  It’s an old friend by this time.”

She looked at it, scarcely seeing, and forced a smile that could not quite remove the furrow of silent intensity from her brows.  Traill saw that.  He could not take his eyes from her face.  Her almost childish passivity was like a slow and heavy poison in his blood.  It crept gradually and gradually through the veins, leaving fire wherever it touched.

Alexandre came back with the wine, and broke the spell of it.  He spread the change out on the table, and the sound of it then, at that moment, was like the breaking of a thousand little pieces of glass, over which his presence walked with clumsy feet.

“Well, what did Mr. Arthur say?” Traill asked when Alexandre had disappeared again and Berthe had brought them their second course.

Sally looked up and smiled at his encouragement, a smile that lit through him.  He could feel it dancing in his eyes.

“He asked me if I had made up my mind,” she replied.

“Made up your mind to marry him?”

“Yes.”

The pause was heavy, it seemed to swing against them.

“And you?  What did you say?”

He tried to conceal the burning of his interest to know.  His voice was steady—­each note of each word quiet, true, subdued; but when the brain is tautened, vibrating as was his, it gives out of itself unconsciously.  She felt the strain in her mind as well, just as though a wire, drawn out, were stretched between them.  She heard the note, half-dominant in his speech.  However quiet his voice, he could not dull her ears to that.

“Oh, I told him I couldn’t; it was impossible.  I don’t love him, I never should love him.  How could one take a step like that on no other basis than wanting a home?  What a home it would be!  I should be miserable.”