Alice Adams | Page 5

a book over so that it lay upon its other side, and for a few moments
occupied herself with similar futilities, having taken on the air of a
person who makes things neat, though she produced no such actual

effect upon them. "Of course you will," she repeated, absently. "You'll
be as strong as you ever were; maybe stronger." She paused for a
moment, not looking at him, then added, cheerfully, "So that you can
fly around and find something really good to get into."
Something important between them came near the surface here, for
though she spoke with what seemed but a casual cheerfulness, there
was a little betraying break in her voice, a trembling just perceptible in
the utterance of the final word. And she still kept up the affectation of
being helpfully preoccupied with the table, and did not look at her
husband-- perhaps because they had been married so many years that
without looking she knew just what his expression would be, and
preferred to avoid the actual sight of it as long as possible. Meanwhile,
he stared hard at her, his lips beginning to move with little distortions
not lacking in the pathos of a sick man's agitation.
"So that's it," he said. "That's what you're hinting at."
"'Hinting?' " Mrs. Adams looked surprised and indulgent. "Why, I'm
not doing any hinting, Virgil."
"What did you say about my finding 'something good to get into?'" he
asked, sharply. "Don't you call that hinting?"
Mrs. Adams turned toward him now; she came to the bedside and
would have taken his hand, but he quickly moved it away from her.
"You mustn't let yourself get nervous," she said. "But of course when
you get well there's only one thing to do. You mustn't go back to that
old hole again."
"'Old hole?' That's what you call it, is it?" In spite of his weakness,
anger made his voice strident, and upon this stimulation she spoke
more urgently.
"You just mustn't go back to it, Virgil. It's not fair to any of us, and you
know it isn't."

"Don't tell me what I know, please!"
She clasped her hands, suddenly carrying her urgency to plaintive
entreaty. "Virgil, you WON'T go back to that hole?"
"That's a nice word to use to me!" he said. "Call a man's business a
hole!"
"Virgil, if you don't owe it to me to look for something different, don't
you owe it to your children? Don't tell me you won't do what we all
want you to, and what you know in your heart you ought to! And if you
HAVE got into one of your stubborn fits and are bound to go back
there for no other reason except to have your own way, don't tell me so,
for I can't bear it!"
He looked up at her fiercely. "You've got a fine way to cure a sick
man!" he said; but she had concluded her appeal--for that time--and
instead of making any more words in the matter, let him see that there
were tears in her eyes, shook her head, and left the room.
Alone, he lay breathing rapidly, his emaciated chest proving itself equal
to the demands his emotion put upon it. "Fine!" he repeated, with husky
indignation. "Fine way to cure a sick man! Fine!" Then, after a silence,
he gave forth whispering sounds as of laughter, his expression the
while remaining sore and far from humour.
"And give us our daily bread!" he added, meaning that his wife's little
performance was no novelty.
CHAPTER II
In fact, the agitation of Mrs. Adams was genuine, but so well under her
control that its traces vanished during the three short steps she took to
cross the narrow hall between her husband's door and the one opposite.
Her expression was matter-of-course, rather than pathetic, as she
entered the pretty room where her daughter, half dressed, sat before a
dressing-table and played with the reflections of a three-leafed mirror
framed in blue enamel. That is, just before the moment of her mother's

entrance, Alice had been playing with the mirror's
reflections--posturing her arms and her expressions, clasping her hands
behind her neck, and tilting back her head to foreshorten the face in a
tableau conceived to represent sauciness, then one of smiling weariness,
then one of scornful toleration, and all very piquant; but as the door
opened she hurriedly resumed the practical, and occupied her hands in
the arrangement of her plentiful brownish hair.
They were pretty hands, of a shapeliness delicate and fine. "The best
things she's got!" a cold- blooded girl friend said of them, and meant to
include Alice's mind and character in the implied list of possessions
surpassed by the notable hands. However that may have been, the rest
of her