“Not necessarily abroad. I’m not going to involve myself in a dangerous undertaking; but I’m just sufficiently tired of my very comfortable existence to wish to make an experiment. I may be away quite a short time, but I might want to be away a few months. Will you promise me not to worry yourself over my movements? Some of the success of this undertaking will probably depend on a certain amount of freedom. You can understand, can’t you, that the claims of home, however delightful, might in certain circumstances be a problem?”
“I suppose you’re taking steps to prepare my mind for something very extremely unpleasant,” she said.
“Let’s ascribe it all to my incurably romantic temperament,” Michael suggested.
“And I’m not to worry?”
“No, please don’t.”
“But when are you going away?”
“I’m not really going away at all,” Michael explained. “But if I didn’t come back to dinner one night or even the next night, would you be content to know quite positively that I hadn’t been run over?”
“You’re evidently going to be thoroughly eccentric. But I suppose,” she added wistfully, “that after your deserted childhood I can hardly expect you to be anything else. Yet it seems so comfortable here.” She was looking round at the chairs.
“I’m not proposing to go to the North Pole, you know,” Michael said, “but I don’t want to obey dinner-gongs.”
“Very noisy and abrupt,” she agreed.