The Man in Possession — page 303: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

298 THE MAN IN POSSESSION. self. This was not the scene he had imagined. This frail, wan girl had not the least likeness to the pas- sionate tragedy queen from whom he had parted in this very room three weeks ago. She filled two cups and held out one to him. ‘‘I forget,” she said, ‘if you take sugar?” She lifted her eyes as she said it, and the look they met suddenly swept aside her assumed composure. What it revealed, or how it revealed it, she could never clearly have said, only that something of his sufferings, something of the weariness and pain of those past weeks, flashed out like spoken words. She saw a change in him that had robbed him of youth and peace, and left but manhood’s patient sad- ness in their place, and she saw too that there was more than pity in his eyes—there was the dumb misery of a hopeless love—laid aside, but uncon- quered still. She laid down the little silver tongs. Notfor worlds could she have lifted them now, or performed that simple action which the answer to her question in- volved. He came a little nearer, and lifted the tongs and put in the sugar in a slow, deliberate fashion. He saw that she was moved, but the look in her eyes had been a revelation to him. He felt that the sor- row of this parting was no longer a sorrow unshared, and the dangerous sweetness of that thought kept him silent. . .. If he broke that silence, if he saw again those uplifted eyes, unconscious of their self-betrayal, and sweet as they had never yet been sweet because of the shadow of regret that lived for him, he felt he should play the traitor in speech as in thought. COMicloe (Sri C(O)