And she, when she undressed, sick and faint but comforted with the
thought that once more a fight was over, blew the light out quickly so
that he should not see the ugly purple mark of the pickaxe.
She usually slept with her nightgown unfastened so that the cool winds
should blow over her through the trellis of the window. To-night she
muffled herself up tightly, and when he came in from a strenuous ten
minutes in the lake, feeling once more as though she had sent him to dip
in Jordan, she pretended to be asleep. Seeing her so unusually wrapped
up, he thought she was cold, and fetched a blanket to cover her. She
dared not yield to her impulse to hold out her arms to him and draw his
aching head on to her breast for fear the bruise should grieve him.
CHAPTER XXV
Once more came peace, so sunlit and tender that it seemed as though they
had wandered into a valley of Avilion where even the echoes of storms
could not come, and doves brooded softly. They talked sometimes now of
the coming of their son; Louis, once he had got over his conventional
horror of such a proceeding, said that she would be as safe in Mrs.
Twist's care, with him hovering in the background, as though she had
gone to the nursing home in Sydney, as he had suggested at first.
"I shall funk awfully to know you're going through it, old lady," he
told her.
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