"A good excuse. Twice as good as I'd need myself to escape."
Catherine stopped. "You don't have to go, if you don't want to."
"Please don't desert us," Philip said, with the genuine courtesy that was his at unexpected moments. "It won't be the same, at all."
"Flattered, I yield." Jean swung to step beside him.
But at the corner of the street, Catherine brought them to a sudden halt. "Excuse or no excuse, I'm dead tired and here I quit."
She left them staring after her.
"I don't believe Catherine's well," Jean said, troubled, as they started again. "Sometimes lately, she looks so terribly tired."
Philip did not answer.
Three times in the few hours remaining before dawn, Jerome awoke, each time to full and instant realization of the thing that had happened. It was incredible, ridiculous, disgusting. Each time Jerome reached this conclusion, he turned over, thumped his pillow to momentary coolness and forced sleep. But each time, before he quite succeeded, a small, shamed relief crept over him, that he would not be seeing Jean again before he left and that he was to be away three weeks.