She stopped herself abruptly, conscious that every question she put to him was ultimately being put to herself.
“Did I ever not love you?” he asked. “It was you that grew tired of me. It was you that sent me away.”
“Don’t pretend that all these years you’ve been waiting for me to come back,” she scoffed.
“Of course not. What I’m trying to explain is that we can start now where we left off; that is, if you will.”
He held out his hand half timidly.
“And if I won’t?”
The hand dropped again to his side, and there was so much wounded sensitiveness in the slight gesture that Sylvia caught him to her as if he were a child who had fallen and needed comforting.
“When I first put my head on your shoulder,” she murmured. “Oh, how well I can remember the day—such a sparkling day, with London spread out like life at our feet. Now we’re in the middle of New York, but it seems just as far away from us two as London was that day—and life,” she added, with a sigh.
CHAPTER XIV
CIRCUMSTANCES seemed to applaud almost immediately the step that Sylvia had taken. There was no long delay caused by looking for work in New York, which might have destroyed romance by its interposition of fretful hopes and disappointments. A variety company was going to leave in November for a tour in eastern Canada. At least two months would be spent in the French provinces, and Sylvia’s bilingual accomplishment was exactly what the manager wanted.