"Dear old Willy," she said. "Faithful old fellow. Of course, I must go and see after you."
She had been living her own personal life, focusing on the present and the sad and sweet circumstances of the present, slipping away for the time from home affairs, home ties, deliberately pushing aside any passing uneasy thoughts about Ronald's extravagant mode of life, letting herself go forward untrammelled into a new world of hopes and fears.
But now voices from the old world of a few short weeks ago, the old world grown strangely older in a few swift days, loved voices, with all the irresistible, exacting persuasion of the past, called to her.
She rose, determined to go home at once, and then she saw Alan.
"Alan," she said, "I must go and find out about the trains and the boat. I must return at once."
"Go away from us?" the boy asked. And he looked as though he heard of some great calamity.
It was he who broke the news to his father.
"Father," he said, "she is going away. Can't we go too?"
Clifford made no answer. He seemed stunned. His face was ashen when he sought Katharine out, and said in a voice that trembled:
"Is it I who am driving you away?"