Life was awry with everyone it seemed! What did it matter what Luce Abinger had to say?
She had no fight left in her. Her feet, as she walked up the sloping lawn, seemed too heavy to lift—they caught in the grass as she stumbled wearily towards the house, Abinger following.
"Good-night, Luce," she said lifelessly as they reached the verandah. She felt no anger towards him now. She let him take her hand and she listened without resentment to his whispered words.
"When are you coming back to your home and your husband, Poppy?"
Indoors, the card-party had broken up. The travellers were tired, and Clem was for hunting them to bed. The men made farewells and went, Abinger with them, and Clem and Miss Allendner hustled away to the rooms of the guests. Poppy took the opportunity of slipping into the narrow little writing-room, which opened off the hall and was meant for common-use. She wished to write out a telegram, and she knew there were forms to be found there. Sitting down to the desk she found the stack of forms and began to write on the top one. But someone had been using it before her, and with a violent hand and stubby pencil had left an entire message deeply indented on the form beneath the one that had been used and torn off. With the first word Poppy wrote the ink flowed from her full pen into the rutted words, outlining a part of the message, and she read all then as dully and unthinkingly as she had done everything else that evening.
"Come back to me. You have never been out of my heart for a moment since first I loved you.—Loraine."
The address was a code word, care of the Rand Club, and the words were in Clem's writing. It was the last link in the chain. If Poppy had had any lingering, hoping doubt in her mind, it fled now. She forgot the words she had meant to write, and then she told herself they didn't matter in any case. Vaguely she remembered to tear the form off and destroy it; then rose from the desk and walked rather blindly to the door and out into the lighted hall. Clem was waiting there to bid her good-night.
The red had faded from her cheeks now, or else the light was kinder, and her eyes looked big and dim. She put out her hands, took Poppy's, and gave them a little, gentle squeeze, and she smiled her own brave turned-up-at-the-corners smile.
"Life is a curious thing, Poppy," she said gently. "It is hard to tell which is dream and which is real. Sometimes I don't think any of it is real at all. Good-night dear."