"Yes. I never expect to come back to New York. I've turned in my resignation and it's been accepted, with a provision of their own invention that, if I change my mind within a year, I am to return." Jean smiled. "And I let it go at that."
"Then all the schemes we've talked over are not to be? No one else can take your place and carry them through."
For a moment Jean felt them dragging at her, holding her back. To what end? What would they give in return? Greater comfort, for a time, to a few people whom she would never see. A few patches put in the social fabric.
"Oh, yes, they can. Why, Charlotte Stetson's so anxious to try her hand she could scarcely be decently regretful!"
Jean tried to speak lightly but Jerome Stuart's expression stopped her.
"Please don't be insincere, Mrs. Herrick."
Jean flushed. She was destroying this man's conception of her and she had valued it.
"You are acting on a lessened impulse and it is wrong," he added quietly. "It is always wrong and so—it is always a mistake."
"Not always," Jean defended, and rose abruptly. If she stayed she might ask him of life and death and the aimless muddle of the whole. "I've thought it over carefully. I am not acting on impulse. It is a decision."
He said nothing as he followed to the door and rang the elevator bell. But as Jean stepped into the cage, he held out his hand and said with the look that had often made Jean feel that, in spite of his forty-eight years, his grown daughter, and all the years of public service behind him, he had kept unspoiled the sweet cleanness of a little child.