"Thanks awfully, old man."
But outside the door Twyning added to himself: "You thought that was an order, my lord; and you didn't like it. Pretty soon you won't think. You'll know."
V
Sabre remained standing at his desk. He had a tiny ball of paper in his hand and he rolled it round between his finger and thumb, round and round and round and round.... In his mind was a recollection: "You have struck your tents and are upon the march."
He thought, "This has been coming a long time.... It's my way of looking at things has done this. I'm getting so I've got nowhere to turn. It's no good pretending I don't feel this. I feel it most frightfully.... I've let down the books. They'll take a back place in the business now. Twyning's always been jealous of them. Fortune's never really liked my success with them. They'll begin interfering with the books now.... My books.... It was rottenly done. Behind my back. Plotted against me, or they wouldn't have sprung it on me like that. That shows what it's going to be like.... It's all through my way of looking at things.... I've no one here I can take things to. This frightful feeling of being alone in the place. And it's going to be worse. And nowhere to get out of it. More empty at home.... And now there's this. And I've got to go back to that.... 'You have struck your tents and are upon the march' ... Yes. Yes...."
He suddenly recollected Nona's letter. He took it from his pocket and opened it; and the second event was discharged upon him.
She wrote from their town house:
"Marko, take me away—Nona."
His emotions leapt to her with most terrible violence. He felt his heart leap against his breast as though, engine of his tumult, it would burst its bonds and to her. He struck his hand upon the desk. He said aloud, "Yes! Yes!" He remembered his words, "If ever you feel you can't bear it, tell me.—Tell me."