Well, Williams said to himself, he was a lawyer; he had seen a good deal of life; he had always known that that was the way the thing would end. But how pitiful and how stupid! He thought of the ferryboat plying unnoticed from one bank of the Hudson to the other. Did Doris Helen suppose she would duplicate that afternoon for a million dollars?
He went punctually at four, and was ushered into the back drawing-room. The terrible room across the front of the house was already occupied by the parting lovers, where presumably the portrait of Alexander Southgate was dominating their farewells.
Antonia received him with a manner of calm triumph, unshadowed by the least doubt that her sister-in-law would keep her word. But after about an hour a silence fell upon her, and Williams became aware that she was listening with increasing eagerness for the sound of the opening of the front drawing-room door. At last she rose to her feet.
"This is unbearable," she said.
"An hour isn't so very long," he returned, "for two people who love each other to take an eternal good-by."
"It's over two hours," said Antonia. "And she had nothing to say to him but no."
A suspicion suddenly came to Williams that perhaps the other room was empty, that perhaps Hale had been driven to the alternative of carrying her off. He sprang to his feet.
"Just wait here," he said to Antonia.
The hallway between the two rooms was in shadow. As he stepped into it, the door of the front room opened and Doris and Hale came out of it together. They did not see Williams, for they both turned at once toward the staircase, Hale in order to descend it and Doris leaning on the balustrade, raising her shoulders and almost taking her feet off the ground. Their manner was not that of people who have parted forever.