“Wire them that you’re starting for Vienna, and that they must communicate with you there. Ah, there are men in Boravia!”
“And Mrs Perkyns? I should never get another character!”
“You’ll go, surely? It might make all the difference. Let them see you, let them see you!”
She shook her head, giving at the same time a short nervous laugh. I sat down by her. Her purse lay in her lap. I took it up; the Princess made no movement; her eyes were fixed on mine. I opened the purse and slipped in the notes I had procured at the bank. Her eyes did not forbid me. I snapped the purse to and laid it down again.
“I had a third-class to London, and eight shillings and threepence,” she said.
“You’ll go now?”
“Yes,” she whispered, rising to her feet.
We stood side by side now, waiting for the train. It was very hard to speak. Presently she passed her hand through my arm and let it rest there. She said no more about the money, which I was glad of. Not that I was thinking much of that. I was still rather mad, and my thoughts were full of one insane idea; it was—though I am ashamed to write it—that just as the train was starting, at the last moment, at the moment of her going, she might say: “Come with me.”
“Did it surprise you?” I said at last, breaking the silence at the cost of asking a very stupid question.
“I had given up all hope. Yet somehow I wasn’t very surprised. You were?”