"You were on the verge of telling me something, when the waiter interrupted," she prompted. "It began like a confession. You'd been speaking about living for other people and your need of rest. Then, you said you'd been thinking——"
"It was about how one could make a man's job out of living," he answered quickly. "It's all wrong
that one should feel decent only when he's attempting to get slaughtered. It takes neither brains nor perseverance to be dead. Any one can——"
"But it was about finding rest that you were speaking."
"Yes, but I've burdened you with too many of my troubles." He hesitated, wondering whether he dare tell her what had happened to his heart. "I've done nothing for you. I've only borrowed from your strength. You're the most restful woman, the most calm——" Then he dodged. "But since you ask me of what I was thinking, it was of how I might escape to the old hardships. I thought I'd call at the Passport Office and get in touch with the Royal Geographical Society, and commence arrangements to explore——"
"Then I sha'n't be seeing you again?" She asked it in a tone of dreariness, bordering on terror. Her hands trembled in her lap. She stared straight before her.
"But you will." He forced a cheerfulness into his voice which he was far from feeling. "These things take time. It may be weeks——"
"But you'll go away. I know it."
"I suppose I shall. Sooner or later I shall return. In the meanwhile we can write."
She paid no attention to his consolation. Her face was gray as granite. Her hands kept folding and unfolding. There was something symbolic in their emptiness. "You won't come back. It's the end. You weren't sent, after all."