7/53 Roderick was at this time doing his part superbly, and Miss Garland's brow was serene. It was serene now, twenty-four hours later; but nevertheless, her alarm had lasted an appreciable moment. But with another week, Rowland said to himself, it would leap erect again; the lightest friction would strike a spark from it. Rowland thought he had schooled himself to face the issue of Mary Garland's advent, casting it even in a tragical phase; but in her personal presence--in which he found a poignant mixture of the familiar and the strange--he seemed to face it and all that it might bring with it for the first time. In vulgar parlance, he stood uneasy in his shoes. |