She loved the steep cliff of his forehead, and
compared it to the brow of a young Greek horseman, who reins his horse
back so sharply that it half falls on its haunches. He always seemed
to her like a rider on a spirited horse. And there was an exaltation
to her in being with him, because there was a risk that he would not
be able to keep to the right pace among other people. Sitting opposite
him at the little table in the window, she came back to that state of
careless exaltation which had overcome her when they halted by the
gate, but now it was accompanied by a sense of sanity and security,
for she felt that they had a feeling in common which scarcely needed
embodiment in words. How silent he was! leaning his forehead on his
hand, now and then, and again looking steadily and gravely at the
backs of the two men at the next table, with so little self-
consciousness that she could almost watch his mind placing one thought
solidly upon the top of another; she thought that she could feel him
thinking, through the shade of her fingers, and she could anticipate
the exact moment when he would put an end to his thought and turn a
little in his chair and say:
"Well, Mary--?" inviting her to take up the thread of thought where he
had dropped it.
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