When Jim returned to Oxford and broke the news of his immediate departure to Dolly, she received it with a calmness which he had not expected. He had anticipated a painful scene, and he was even a little disappointed that she fell in so readily with his plans.
“Yes,” she said. “If you’ve made up your mind to go, it’s no good hanging about here. You’ve been finding rather a lot of fault with me lately. Perhaps when you are alone you will appreciate all I’ve done for you.”
“Of course I shall, dear,” he replied.
Quietly, and in a very business-like manner, she asked him what arrangements he had made about the money she was to draw; and this being settled to her satisfaction she approached, with apparent diffidence, a more important subject.
“I do hope you aren’t going to any dangerous places,” she said. “You mustn’t take any risks.”
He assured her that he had no intention of doing so.
“But supposing anything happened to you,” she went on, “what would become of me?”
“I’ll make my will, if you like,” he laughed.
She uttered a gasp of horror. “What a dreadful thought!” she murmured. She was silent for a few moments, her eyes gazing out of the window, her mouth a little open. Then, without looking at him, she said: “I suppose just a line on a sheet of paper will do? You only have to say that you leave everything to me ... at least I take it that there’s nobody else to leave it to?” She turned to him with an innocent smile.
“Oh, no, it’s all yours if I die,” he replied.