Herself almost completely without
physical fear, she was unable to understand, and so she made the most of
what she felt to be his fear's redeeming feature, which was that though
he was a coward under a shock and a coward under a strain--when his
imagination was given play--he had yet a sort of dashing recklessness
that moved her on its brief occasions almost to admiration, and a pride
that usually steadied him when he thought he was observed.
The trait first showed itself in a dozen incidents of little more than
nervousness--his warning to a taxi-driver against fast driving, in
Chicago; his refusal to take her to a certain tough cafe she had always
wished to visit; these of course admitted the conventional
interpretation--that it was of her he had been thinking; nevertheless,
their culminative weight disturbed her. But something that occurred in a
San Francisco hotel, when they had been married a week, gave the matter
certainty.
It was after midnight and pitch dark in their room. Gloria was dozing
off and Anthony's even breathing beside her made her suppose that he was
asleep, when suddenly she saw him raise himself on his elbow and stare
at the window.
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