He had
a considerable gift of behaving as though nothing out of the ordinary
had happened when the contrary was the case. Nobody could have guessed
from his features that he was calculating and recalculating
the chances of immediate imprisonment, and that each successive
calculation disagreed with the previous one; at one moment the chances
were less than one in a hundred, less than one in a million;
at another they increased and multiplied themselves into tragic
certainty.
When Rachel heard him in the lobby her sudden tears were tears of joy
and deliverance. She did not try to restrain them. As she stole back
to her chair she ignored all her reasonings against him, and lived
only in the fact that he had returned. And she was triumphant. She
thought: "Now that he is in the house, he is mine. I have him. He
cannot escape me. In a caress I shall cancel all the past since his
accident. So long as I can hold him I don't care." Her soul dissolved
in softness towards him; even the body seemed to melt also, till,
instead of being a strong, sturdy girl, she was a living tentacular
endearment and naught else.
But when, with disconcerting quickness, he came into the room, she
hardened again in spite of herself.
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