She was so deeply absorbed that she merely felt, without realizing, the presence of someone hesitating at her elbow, someone who moved past her to draw out a chair opposite her and set down his tray. She moved her coffee-cup to make room for it, and apologetically lifted the book from the sugar bowl, glancing across it to see Paul.
The shock was so great that for an instant she did not move or think. He stood motionless and stared at her with eyes wiped blank of any expression. Her cup rattled as the book dropped against it and the sound roused her. With the sensation of a desperate twist, like that of a falling cat righting itself in the air, she faced the situation.
“Why—Paul!” she said, and felt that the old name struck the wrong note. “How you startled me. But of course I’m very glad to see you again. Do sit down.”
In his face she saw clearly his chagrin, his rage at himself for blundering into this awkwardness, his resolve to see it through. He put himself firmly into the chair and though his face and even his neck were red, there was the remembered determination in the set of his lips and the lift of his chin.
“I’m certainly surprised to see you,” he said. “From all I’ve been hearing about you I had a notion you never ate in places like this any more. They tell me you’re getting along fine. I’m mighty glad to hear it.” With deliberation he dipped two level spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee and attacked the triangle of pie.
“Oh, I come in sometimes for a change,” she said lightly. “Yes, everything’s fine with me. You’re looking well, too.”
There was an undeniable air of prosperity about him. His suit was tailor-made, and the hat on the hook above his head was a new gray felt of the latest shape. His face had changed very slightly, grown perhaps a bit fuller than she remembered, and the line of the jaw was squarer. But he looked at her with the same candid, straight gaze. Of course, she could not expect warmth in it.
“Well, I can’t complain,” he said. “Things are going pretty well. Slow, of course, but still they’re coming.”
“I’m awfully glad to hear it. Your mother’s well?” The situation was fantastic and ghastly, but she would not escape from it until she could do so gracefully. She formed the next question in her mind while he answered that one.
“Do you often get up to the city?”
“Oh, now and then. I only come when I have to. It’s too windy and too noisy to suit me. I just came up this morning to see a real-estate firm here about a house they’ve got in Ripley. I’m going back tonight.”
“You’re buying a house?” she cried in the tone of a child who sees a toy taken from it. Her anger at her lack of self-control was increased when she saw that he had misinterpreted her feeling.
“Just to rent,” he said hastily. “I’m not thinking of—moving. Mother and I are satisfied where we are, and I expect it’ll be some time before I get that place paid for. This other house—” It seemed to her unbearable that he should have two houses. But he went on doggedly, determined, she saw, to give no impression of a prosperity that was not his. “I expect you wouldn’t think much of it. But there’s a big real-estate firm up here that’s going to boom Ripley, and I wanted to get in on as much of it as I could. They’re buying up half the land in the county, and I had an option on a little piece they wanted, so I traded it in for this house. I figure I can fix it up some and make a good thing renting it pretty soon.”
She saw that her momentary envy had been absurd. He might have two houses, but he was only one of the unnumbered customers of a big real-estate firm. At that moment her husband was dealing as an equal with the heads of such a firm. There was, of course, no comparison between the two men, and she made none. The stirring of remembered affection that she felt for Paul registered in her mind only a pensive realization of the decay of everything under the erosion of time.
She felt that she was managing the interview very well, and when she saw Paul resugaring his coffee from time to time, with the same deliberate measuring of two level spoonfuls, she felt a complex gratification. She told herself that she did not want Paul to be still in love with her and unhappy, but there was a pleasure in seeing this evidence that his agitation was greater than hers. Being ashamed of the emotion did not kill it.
He told her, with an attempt to control his pride, that he was no longer with the railroad company. The man who “just about owned Ripley” had given him a better job. He was in charge of the ice-plant and lumberyard now, and he was getting a hundred and fifty a month. He mentioned the figures diffidently, as one who does not desire to be boastful.
“That’s fine!” she said, and thought that they paid nearly half that sum for rent, and that the very clothes she was wearing had cost more than his month’s salary. She would have liked him to know these things, so that he might see how wonderful Bert was, though
