He hesitated, bit his lip, then he reached out and took her hand and pressed it to his lips. “I have been ordered to America,” he said, baldly.
She did not speak, did not stir. It seemed to him that her expression did not alter by so much as a shade. She was still. It was almost as if animation were suspended. Andree did not turn her eyes from his face, nor did she move or speak. She did not gaze at him questioningly nor accusingly nor imploringly—she merely gazed with that accompaniment of stillness!... He felt that he must speak and break that quietness which he could feel as with a physical pain.
“I got my orders yesterday.... I—it didn’t seem possible. I couldn’t believe it.... I only knew yesterday.” He felt that he must clear himself of any guilt of concealment, of having known of this thing and kept it from her.
“Quand?” she said.
“I go to-morrow night—to Brest, and then to America.”
She turned to her plate and began to eat. She had uttered no complaint, shed no tear, done none of the things he had dreaded she might do. There had been no painful scene, but he was not relieved. She was so still!
He fumbled in his pocket and took out the little jeweler’s package and removed the bracelet. She watched him gravely, with no outward sign of emotion, and when he reached for her hand she gave it to him unprotestingly. He snapped the bracelet about her wrist. She looked down at it, and then up into his face.
“It is ver’ pretty,” she said, “and you are mos’ good to me....” That was all, but every now and then he saw her staring at the bracelet and staring at it as if it were something strange and inexplicable. Once she reached across with her other hand and touched it, felt of it, as if to assure herself that it was really there, an actual thing and not imagined.
Ken tried to talk, Bert tried to talk, but the effort was futile. Dead, cold silences fell.... The sensations of that meal would remain with Kendall as long as he should live, a recurrent nightmare. Presently Bert arose. He did a thing which he had never done before—lifted Andree’s hand and touched it with his lips.
“I must go, mademoiselle,” he said. “Good-by.”