“Well, have it your own way,” he said. “It needn’t have been absurd.”
“No, it couldn’t help but be!” she informed him cheerfully. “The way I am and the way you are, it couldn’t ever be anything else. So what was the use?”
“I don’t know,” he sighed, and his sigh was abysmal. “But what I wanted to tell you is this: when you went away, you didn’t let me know and didn’t care how or when I heard it, but I’m not like that with you. This time, I’m going away. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I’m going away tomorrow night—indefinitely.”
She nodded sunnily. “That’s nice for you. I hope you’ll have ever so jolly a time, George.”
“I don’t expect to have a particularly jolly time.”
“Well, then,” she laughed, “if I were you I don’t think I’d go.”
It seemed impossible to impress this distracting creature, to make her serious. “Lucy,” he said desperately, “this is our last walk together.”
“Evidently!” she said, “if you’re going away tomorrow night.”
“Lucy—this may be the last time I’ll see you—ever—ever in my life.”
At that she looked at him quickly, across her shoulder, but she smiled as brightly as before, and with the same cordial inconsequence: “Oh, I can hardly think that!” she said. “And of course I’d be awfully sorry to think it. You’re not moving away, are you, to live?”