“But what on earth are you doing here at all?” Harriet demanded angrily. “What were Stubbs and that cap-and-apron nurse thinking of? Go back at once, or you’ll die!”
Wiggie looked guilty, trying to lean against a flower-stand afflicted with a chronic wobble, and she put her hand beneath his elbow.
“Oh, I needn’t die yet, need I, please? Hamer came round on his way here, and I—he seemed lonely. Dennison said Lancaster was back.”
Harriet nodded, opening the glass door, and supporting him inside.
“You’d better come out of the cold, as you are here. Yes. About an hour since. Looking about twenty years older, and half-cracked. Sent Helwise upstairs in screaming hysterics. He’s in there.” She jerked her head towards the office. “Dandy’s with him.”
Wiggie gave one long, quiet glance at the closed door. No sound of voices came to the two equally silent outside, the absence of speech within that shut room conveying an intimate isolation that no exchange of words could have held. In that look it seemed almost as if he were saying good-bye. Then he turned to Harriet, smiling as on the step.
“I did not come for Dandy,” he said gently. “I came for you.”
Harriet blushed violently. She looked angered almost to tears.
“You’ve no need to lie to me, Cyril! I should have thought you ought to know that, by now.”
“But it is true!” he said simply. And it was true. The look had been merely the seal set on a renunciation made weeks ago on the Watters stairs. “It’s been such a dreadfully long day without you! Dear old Stubbs has been hunting germs, and the nurse told me all the diseases I’d just missed having, and all the diseases I might have yet, if I’d hurry up. Can’t we slip away now, and send the car back for the others? Hamer won’t mind.”