"You might have come to see me," Stella Croyle suggested. "You knew that I wished to see you."
"Yes, but I have been very busy," he answered. "I am going away."
Stella Croyle looked at him curiously.
"You too! You have joined up?"
Hillyard shook his head.
"No good," he answered. "I told you my lungs were my weak point. I am turned down—and I am going abroad. It's not very pleasant to find oneself staying on in London, going to a little dinner party here and there where all the men are oldish, when all of one's friends have gone."
Stella Croyle's face and voice softened.
"Yes. I can understand that," she said.
Hillyard watched her narrowly, but there was no doubt that she was sincere. She had received him with an air of grievance, and a hard accent in her voice. But she was entering now into a comprehension of the regrets which must be troubling him.
"I am sorry," she continued. "I never cared very much for women. I have very few friends amongst them. And so I am losing—every one." She held out her hand to him in sympathy. "But if I were a man and had been turned down by the doctors, I don't think that I could stay. I should go like you and hide."