THE SHADOWY THIRD
had felt Her watching his face; always on the verge of saying something. . . .
When they returned to the drawing-room the fire had burnt down a little. Martin piled on wood, then sat back in the shadow watching Pussy, who, with a reading lamp at her elbow, had begun to sew. He never read these evenings; a table of bric-à-brac had been pushed up against the doors of the bookcase with the gilt-bound classics and encyclopædias which had beguiled his evenings other years. Books, after all, were musty things, and all the book-learning in the world didn't make him more valuable to Pussy, whose eye wandered when he spoke to her of dynasties or carnivorous plants. He would pull her workbox towards him and amuse himself sorting its contents. One evening he came on a thimble-case which made him start. "Where did you get that, Pussy?" he asked fiercely. It appeared that she had had it since she was a little girl. Strange that it should be the same as another, so familiar once! He confiscated it and brought her a morocco one next day, with a new thimble in it that did not fit.
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