One day, about a month after Anne had met Merle, Roger came home earlier than he had come for some time, and very gay. He had succeeded in getting an appeal for the Hindoo revolutionists and that was more than any one had expected.
"Tom's like a small boy. I never saw him so excited."
"And Merle, I suppose, is flitting all over the place, trying to talk Hindustani?"
"No. Merle isn't 'round these days. I haven't seen her for weeks. She's been dodging work for some time, coming and going when she liked. Come to think of it, I don't believe she's been there at all for ages. Katya was saying something about getting another stenographer. Merle's bad enough, but she was better than nothing."
"Katya'd better go ahead and get one then, because Merle won't come back. She's gone away with another man."
The amazement in Roger's eyes struck at Anne's control. Merle was right. She had flitted among them and flitted away. Concerned with the affairs of distant India, Roger did not even know it. And he had liked Merle with her gay slang, her flippant comment.
"Do you suppose that Tom O'Connell has happened to notice she's gone? Perhaps you'd better not tell him. He may never find it out at all."
"So—that—was it," Roger said slowly, putting together the pieces of a puzzle that had caught his attention the day after Tom's return from the South. "Poor Tom—poor old Tom. But it had to come. Merle had gone as far as she could—and Tom couldn't stay behind."
"Certainly not," Anne said quietly, "an Indian woman in Burmah might have died."
"What? What about an Indian woman?"