Page:Restless Earth.djvu/26

Harley whom she had married and with whom she had spent ten happy years. He had been full of light-hearted gaiety, playfully reproaching the visitor for her desertion and protesting that the house seemed like a morgue without her.

“That doesn’t say much for Grace,” Patricia had remarked.

“Oh, Grace understands me,” Harley had cried, throwing himself down beside his wife on the chesterfield and hugging her with real affection. “Don’t you, sweetheart?”

“Yes,” Grace had answered with quiet gravity.

Patricia had eyed them quizzically for a moment, then had turned abruptly to the piano.

Harley had looked at his wife with a puzzled air.

“What’s the matter, dear?” he had asked.

“Nothing, Jimmy.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, come and help us sing a few songs. I have another I want Pat to sing.”

He had lifted Grace to her feet and escorted her to the piano with an arm around her waist, and had wondered why she seemed reluctant to be released.

His easy assumption that the curious emotional disturbance engendered by the proximity of Patricia was merely the faintest stirring of the eternal Adam—too faint to be concerned about—was destroyed on that evening at a point in the road to the tram-stop where the full moon cast the shadow of tall pines.

“Don’t come any further, please,” Patricia had begged. “I’ll be quite all right.”

He had not taken her seriously.

“Too late to argue the matter now, Miss Weybourn. My orders are to see you to the tram. Come along, we’ll miss it if we do not hurry.”

“Please, Mr. Harley, I want to be alone.”

“But you can’t wander these streets alone at this time of night! And—and Grace is sure to ask me