Irene Kilnorton had been with her that day and had told her that, since she chose to have the man back, she must treat him properly and look as though she were glad to see him; that she must, in fact, give a fair trial to the experiment which she had decided to allow. Being thoroughly in harmony with the theory of renunciation, this advice made a great impression on Ora. She professed her joy that Jack was to arrive on a Sunday, because she would thus be free from the theatre and able to meet him at Southampton. To meet him at Southampton was an admirable way of treating him properly and of giving a fair trial to the experiment. Ashley's raised brows hinted that this excess of welcome was hardly due to the Prodigal. Ora insisted on it. He was past surprise by now, or he would have wondered when she went on:
"But of course I can't go alone; I hate travelling alone; and I don't know anything about how the boats come in or anything. You must come with me, you know."
"Oh, I'm to go with you, am I?"
"Yes; and you'll go and find him and bring him to me. Somebody'll tell you which is him."
"And then I'm to leave you with him and come back to town alone?"
Ora's smile suddenly vanished. "Don't, dear," she said, laying her hand on his arm. That was her way always when he touched on the black side of the situation. Her plans and pictures still stopped short with the arrival of the boat. "It'll be our last time quite alone and uninterrupted together," she reminded him, as though he could forget the object of the expedition and be happy in the thought that it meant two hours with her.
"I don't see why you shouldn't travel back with us," she added a moment later. "Oh, of course you will!"
He chafed at her use of the word "us," for now it meant herself and Jack, and had the true matrimonial ring, asserting for Mr. Fenning a position which the law only, and not Ashley's habit of thought, accorded him. But he would have to accustom himself to this "us" and all that it conveyed. He forced himself to smile as he observed, "Perhaps Fenning'll want to smoke!"
Ora laughed merrily and said that she hoped he would. Even to Ashley it seemed odd that the notion appeared to her rather as a happy possibility than as a reductio ad absurdum of her attitude; she really thought it conceivable that Jack might go and smoke, while she and Ashley had another "last time quite alone together." But she had such an extraordinary power of commending absurdities to serious consideration that he caught himself rehearsing the best terms in which to make the suggestion to Mr. Fenning.