'I say,' he said to her one evening, in an odd, unthinking, uncertain
way, 'won't you stay to dinner tonight? I wish you would.'
She started slightly. He spoke to her like a man making a request of
another man.
'They'll be expecting me at home,' she said.
'Oh, they won't mind, will they?' he said. 'I should be awfully glad if
you'd stay.'
Her long silence gave consent at last.
'I'll tell Thomas, shall I?' he said.
'I must go almost immediately after dinner,' she said.
It was a dark, cold evening. There was no fire in the drawing-room,
they sat in the library. He was mostly silent, absent, and Winifred
talked little. But when Gerald did rouse himself, he smiled and was
pleasant and ordinary with her. Then there came over him again the long
blanks, of which he was not aware.
She was very much attracted by him. He looked so preoccupied, and his
strange, blank silences, which she could not read, moved her and made
her wonder over him, made her feel reverential towards him.
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