“I do, too,” said he, “but I was so afraid it would seem cruel in me to suggest it. I don't want to grow callous like my father.” He shuddered. “I want to do the decent thing, Mary.” His eyes were pleading.
“I know, dearest, you've been very kind. But for both our sakes, it will be far better if you go for a time.” She rose, and, coming round the table, kissed his rough hair. He caught her hand, and pressed it gratefully. “You are good to me, Mary.”
The matter settled, Stefan's spirit soared. He rang up the French Line and secured one of the few remaining berths for their next sailing, which was in three days. He telephoned an ecstatic cable to Adolph. Then, hurrying to the attic, he brought down his friend's old Gladstone, and his own suitcase, and began to sort out his clothes. Mary, anxious to quell her heartache by action, came up to help him, and vetoed his idea of taking only the barest necessities.
“I know,” she said, “you want to get back to your old Bohemia. But remember you are a well-known artist now—the celebrated Stefan Byrd,” and she courtesied to him. “Suppose you were to meet some charming people whom you wanted to see something of? Do take a dinner-jacket at least.”
He grinned at her. “I shall live in a blouse and sleep in my old attic with Adolph. That's the only thing I could possibly want to do. But I won't be fractious, Mary. If it will please you to have me take dress clothes I'll do it—only you must pack them yourself!”
She nodded smilingly. “All right, I shall love to.” She had failed to make her husband happy in their home, she thought; at least she would succeed in her manner of speeding him from it. It was her tragedy that he should want to go. That once faced, she would not make a second tragedy of his going.
She spent the next morning, while he went to town to buy his ticket, in a thorough overhauling of his clothes. She found linen bags to hold his shoes and a linen folder for his shirts. She pressed his ties and brushed his coats, packed lavender bags in his underwear, and slipped a framed snapshot of herself and Elliston into the bottom of the Gladstone. With it, in a box, she put the ring she had given him, with the winged head, which he had ceased to wear of late. She found some new poems and a novel he had not read, and packed those. She gave him her own soapbox and toothbrush case. She cleaned his two bags with shoe polish. Everything she could think of was done to show that she sent him away willingly, and she worked so hard that she forgot to notice how her heart ached. In the afternoon she met him in town and they had dinner together. He suggested their old hotel, but she shook her head. “No dear, not there,” she said, smiling a little tremulously. They went to a theatre, and got home so late that she was too tired to be wakeful.
“By the by,” she said next morning at breakfast, “don't worry about my being alone after you've gone. I thought it might be triste for the first few days, so I've rung up the Sparrow, and she's coming to occupy your room for a couple of weeks. She's off for her yearly trip abroad at the end of the month. Says she can't abide the Dutch, but means to see what there is to their old Rhine, and come back by way of Tuscany and France.” Mary gurgled. “Can't you see her in Paris, poor dear, 'doing' the Louvre, with her nose in a guidebook. Why! Perhaps you may!”
“The gods forbid,” said Stefan devoutly.
He had brought his paints and brushes home the night before, and after breakfast Mary helped him stow them away in the Gladstone, showing him smilingly how well she had done his packing. While he admired, she remembered to ask him if he had obtained a letter of credit. He burst out laughing.