Lee Randon was startled to find the brightness of morning penetrating
his eyes; ready for his bath, with the percolator choking and bubbling
in the next room, he rehearsed, reaffirmed, all that he had decided the
night before. No one was with him at the breakfast table elaborate with
repousse silver and embroidered linen and iced fruit; but, returning
upstairs, he saw Savina in her biscuit-colored suit in the library.
"William had to go to Washington," she told him; "he left his regrets."
She was, Lee perceived, almost haggard, with restless hands; but she
didn't avoid his gaze. She stood by the table, one hand, gloved,
slightly behind her on it. Bending forward he kissed her more intently,
more passionately, more wholly, than ever before.
* * * * *
"I hadn't meant to do that," he said; but his speech was only
mechanical, as though, when he had once made it up, it discharged
itself, in a condition where it was no longer valid, in spite of him.
Savina replied with a silent smile. Her drawn appearance had gone; she
was animated, sparkling, with vitality; even her body seemed fuller.
"We shall have a long unbroken day together," she told him; "I have to
go out for an hour, and then it will begin, here, I think, with lunch."
"I ought to be back in Eastlake," he confessed.
"Don't think of that till it comes. Eastlake has had you a long time,
compared with a day.
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