What adventures he had accepted
had been the minor experiments of his restlessness, and they all ended
in the manner that had finished him with Anette, in dissatisfaction and
a sense of waste.
Savina stirred and sighed. "I must ring for tea," she said regretfully;
and, while the servant arranged the pots and decanters and pitchers,
the napkins and filled dishes, Lee paced up and down, smoking. When
they were again alone her fingers stole under his arm:
"I adore you for--for everything." She had evaded the purpose of her
speech. He wondered, with the exasperation of his over-wrought physical
suspense, if she did. His ravishment had suffered a sharp natural
decline reflected in a mental gloom. For the moment he desired nothing,
valued nothing. And, in this mood, he became talkative; he poured a
storm of pessimistic observation over Savina; and she listened with a
rapt, transported, attention. It stopped as suddenly as it had begun,
in a silence coincident with dusk. The room slowly lost its sombre
color and the sense of the confining walls; it became grey and
apparently limitless; as monotonous, Lee Randon thought, as life. He
was disturbed by a new feeling: that perversely, trivially, he had
spoiled what should have been a priceless afternoon. It would never
come back; what a fool he had been to waste in aimless talk any of the
few hours which together they owned.
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