“You’re going to?”
He loosed himself. “Mother, it’s shameful that we should speak so of a girl.”
Crossing the room, he opened the door and halted on the point of departure.
“Are you going to?”
“I can’t There are things I haven’t told you.”
As the door closed, she extended her arms to him, then buried her face in her hands. When the sound of his footsteps had died out utterly, she followed.
Teddy turned from gazing into the darkened room. The window was empty. The other silent witness had departed.
As if coming to uphold him in his allegiance to romance, the Invincible Armada of dreamers sailed out: cresting the sullen horizon of housetops, the white moon swam into the heavens—the admiral ship of illusion, with lesser moons of faint stars following. He remembered that through all his years that white fleet of stars would be watching, riding steadily at anchor. Nothing of bitterness could sink one ship of that celestial armada. He clenched his hands. And nothing that he might hear of bitterness should sink one hope of his great belief in the goodness and kindness of the world.