"You must go," she said. "You must go at once."
"I'm sorry," said Jeff. He was looking at her with what Miss Annabel called his beautiful smile. "You can't possibly believe I want things to be right for you. But it's true. I mean to make them righter than they are, too. But I don't believe we can shackle ourselves together. I don't believe that's right."
He went away, leaving her trembling. There was nothing for it but to go. On the sidewalk not far from her door he met Reardon with a casual nod, and Reardon blazed out at him, "Damn you!" At least that was what Jeff for the instant thought he said and turned to look at him. But Reardon was striding on and the back of his excellent great-coat looked so handsomely conventional that Jeff concluded he had been mistaken. He went on trying to sift his distastes and revulsions from what he wanted to do for Esther. Something must be done. Esther must no more be bound than he.
Reardon did not knock at her door. He opened it and went in and Esther even passionately received him. They greeted each other like acknowledged lovers, and he stood holding her to him while she sobbed bitterly against his arm.
"What business had he?" he kept repeating. "What business had he?"
"I can't talk about it," said Esther. "But I can never go through it again. You must take me away."
"I'm going myself," said Reardon. "I'm booked for Liverpool."
Esther was spent with the weariness of the years that had brought her no compensating joys for her meagre life with grandmother upstairs and her most uneasy one since Madame Beattie came. How could she, even if Reardon furnished money for it, be sure to free herself from Jeff in time to taste some of the pleasures she craved while she was at her prime of beauty? After all, there were other lands to wander in; it wasn't necessary to sit down here and do what Addingtonians had done since they settled the wretched place on the date they seemed to find so sacred. So she told him, in a poor sad little whisper:
"I shall die if you leave me."
"I won't go," said Reardon, at once. "I'll stand by."