“As your gods keep you,” he said.
And she, with the embarrassment of one who returns a formal congratulation, answered: “And yours ... and yours, Nick. You’ve been good.”
CHAPTER XXIII
AN INSTANT FREE
I
Mr. Fane-Herbert decided to be in London with the spring. Ibble’s and Ordith’s were to remain independent, an arrangement of which both he and Nick Ordith saw the advantages, and which Aggett alone regretted wholeheartedly. Three weeks in Japan would complete Mr. Fane-Herbert’s work in the East, and to Tokio he went, with Margaret and her mother, at the end of February.
Soon afterwards the Pathshire, having finished her refitting, sailed for Yokohama, and on the first Friday in March, John and Hugh, who had obtained week-end leave, arrived at Kamakura. That evening, when the hotel dinner was over, they sat together in the verandah of John’s bedroom. Below them stretched the lawn, its size exaggerated by the semi-darkness, its nearer edge, gloomy under the hotel’s shadow, slashed, where the gleam of windows fell upon it, with parallelograms of yellow light.
“They come to-morrow,” Hugh said.
“This will be the last that you’ll see of them before they leave for home.”
Hugh nodded. “Margaret will be glad to go.”