But she released herself from Louise's arms and shook her head, all the time dabbing, dabbing at her eyes with her little wad of a lace handkerchief.
"Don't ask me such an absurd thing, Louise," she replied. "Of course I can't do anything so outlandishly foolish."
"Then I must go alone, dear," said Louise, bitter disappointment placarded on her drawn face. "I wanted to be always with you. I never meant to leave you. But I can't stay now. Won't you come, mother?"
Mrs. Treharne shook her head and sobbed. Louise gazed commiseratingly at the weak, tempestuously-crying little woman, and then went to her rooms. She called Laura on the telephone.
"I am coming to you now, Laura," she said.
"You mean tonight, dear?" inquired Laura in her caressing contralto, refraining, with the wisdom of a woman of experience, from giving utterance to any astonishment.
"Yes, at once," said Laura. "I shall take a taxicab and be there within the half hour."
"I shall be waiting, dear," replied Laura.
Louise, in hat and coat, bent over her mother, who had thrown herself weeping on a couch, and sought to soothe her. But her mother had only wild, broken reproaches for her for going away "so foolishly, so unnecessarily," and Louise saw that her efforts to calm her were futile. So she bent over and kissed her mother's tear-wet face, then walked down the stairs and out of the house to the waiting taxicab. She never put foot in the house on the Drive again.