He could not understand why, sometimes, she would seem so eager and delighted with the prospect of marriage, and at other times she would be in a mood for indefinite postponement, as though she wished to keep him for ever lingering after her with all his thirst for love unquenched.
He could not know that she was beginning to realize, with that intuition which no man can fathom, that her dreams had been but dreams, and the love that they thought everlasting but the passing shadow of a moment.
When he got back to the reporters' room that evening—he had been reporting the visit of a famous actress to a Home for Incurables—Willoughby met him with a grave face.
"Heard about Wratten?" he asked.
"No—what is it?" Humphrey said, feeling that evil news was coming.
"Double pneumonia—they thought it was a chill at first ... he got it at that mine disaster last week. You were there, weren't you?"
"Yes. He would insist on staying out all night ... it was raining...."
"That was Wratten all over," Willoughby said.
Humphrey winced. "Don't say 'was,'" he said, almost fiercely. "Wratten's going to get better. It's impossible for him to die ... why, he is only just begun to live ... and there's his wife ... and, perhaps...."