This message, too, was unsigned, and, being so, it puzzled her:
Always close to you in spirit and loving you.
That wasn't like Hubert—and Bob was on the sea.
She walked slowly, reading it again and again, till her eyes caught the address in a corner—Havana. She remembered then that the Demerara was to touch at that port, and understood. Crushing the telegraphic slip into the bottom of her handbag, she made her way to the square and took her place in the car.
As she jolted down the face of the cliff she wished that this message hadn't come till after her return from the studio. Then it wouldn't have mattered. It would have been too late to matter. Not that it mattered now—only, that the way in which Bob expressed himself made her feel uneasy. "Always close to you in spirit." She didn't want him to be close to her in any way, but in spirit least of all. Latterly, she had heard Mrs. Weatherby, a convert to some school of New Thought, discourse on the unreality of separations and the bridging power of spirit, and while these ideas made no appeal to her, they endued Bob's telegram with a ghostly creepiness. If he was close to her in spirit on an errand like the present one....
So she turned back from the very studio door. She couldn't go in. She couldn't so much as put her hand on the knob. Knowing that Hubert was within a few yards of her, eager to be hers as she was to be his, she crept guiltily down the stairs.
She cried all night from humiliation and repentance. It was as if Bob had laid a spell on her. Unless she could break it, her life would be ruined.
But the opportunity to break it came no later than the very next day. Chancing to look out into Indiana Avenue, she saw Hubert scanning Number Eleven from the other side of the street. He must indeed want to see her, since he had taken this journey into the unknown.
Picking up a sunshade, she went out and spoke to him. He refused to come in, but begged her to take a little walk.
"Jennie, what's your game?" he asked, roughly, as they sauntered down the avenue toward the edge of the cliff. "Why don't you come to the studio when I ask you? What are you afraid of?"