ONE:That moment of his entry had become to him a matter of daily excitement and expectation. Sometimes the soft furrow would be ruled between her eyebrows, and she would give him but the glance of a stranger and a chilly Good-morning, and instantly turn her attention to her work again. Sometimes she would show such a face as she had shown him that Sunday morning on the downs when they had listened to the skylark together, a face of childhood and the possession of spring, sometimes (and it was this that gave the grizzled elderly man the tremulous excitement of a boy when his hand opened the door) she would give him that look which had shot across the town-hall like the launching of a silver spear and transfixed him. But if he did not get it then, sometime during the morning, in some pause in the work, or perhaps even in the middle of his dictation, he would receive it from her, just that one look which made him know, so long as it lasted, that there{265} was no bar or impediment between himself and her. There was neither speech nor language, but her essential self spoke, revealing, affirming to him its existence. Then without pause she would drop her eyes to her work again, and her busy pencil scooped and dabbed over the paper, and he heard in some secret place of his brain, while his lips pronounced sharp business-like sentences, the words, And thou beside me singing in the wilderness.... In the afternoon, when he came to read over her typewritten transcription of the dictation, he always knew at what point in some peremptory letter out of all the sheaf that moment of the clear glance had come. He was always on the look-out for it, but he could never induce it: she gave it him, so it had begun to seem, not in answer to him, but just when she could withhold it no longer.Fred thereupon began to moralize on the policy of introducing Japanese customs into America. He thought more practicable good could be done by the adoption of the Japanese cupwhich would teach our people[Pg 96] to drink more lightly than at presentthan by Frank's plan of introducing the Japanese pillow. He thought there would be some drawbacks to Frank's enterprise, which would offset the good it could do. Thus a great number of people whom the pillow might bring up at an early hour would spend the time in ways that would not be any benefit to society, and they might as well be asleep, and in many cases better, too. But the tiny drinking-cup would moderate the quantity of stimulants many persons would take, and thus a great good might be accomplished.
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