"You would have done
it in my place?"
She shook her head. "No, I should have wanted to, but I couldn't. I am
not big enough for that."
He was already ascending the stairs, but at her words, he turned and
smiled down on her. "It was nothing to make a fuss about," he said.
"Anybody would have done it."
Then he mounted the stairs lightly for his great height, taking two
steps at a time, while she passed out on the porch where Stephen was
waiting for her. As he rose wearily from the wicker rocking chair beside
the empty perambulator, she felt as if he were a stranger. In that one
night she seemed to have put the whole universe between her and the old
order that he represented.
"I kept my car waiting for you," he began. "It was better to let your
man go home."
She smiled at him in the pale light, and he broke out nervously: "You
look as if you would drop. What have they done to you?" Though she wore
the cloak of peacock-blue over her evening gown, the pointed train wound
on the floor behind her, and the fan of white ostrich plumes, which she
had forgotten to leave in the car, was still in her hand.
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