Page "fiction" Paragraph 905

`` Now drive carefully, for God's sake ''!!

She called, trying to attain a half humorous resentment at his departure.

But he did not notice, and was already backing the car down to the road, saying `` Toot-toot ''!!

To the stump of a tree as he passed it, the same stump which had impaled the car of many a guest in the past thirty years and which he refused to have removed.

She stood clutching her shawl around her shoulders until he had swung the car onto the road.

Then, when he had it pointed down the hill, he stopped to gaze at her through the window.

She had begun to turn back toward the house, but his look caught her and she stood still, waiting there for what his expression indicated would be a serious word of farewell.

He looked at her out of himself, she thought, as he did only for an instant at a time, the look which always surprised her even now when his uncombable hair was yellowing a little and his breath came hard through his nicotine-choked lungs, the look of the gaunt youth she had suddenly found herself staring at in the Tate Gallery on a Thursday once.

Now she kept herself protectively ready to laugh again and sure enough he pointed at her with his index finger and said `` Toot ''!!

Once more and roared off into the fog, his foot evidently surprising him with the suddenness with which it pressed the accelerator, just as his hand did when he worked.

She walked back to the house and entered, feeling herself returning, sensing some kind of opportunity in the empty building.

There is a death in all partings, she knew, and promptly put it out of her mind.