“So make up your mind,” she said.
He sat motionless for a long while: while she undressed and brushed her hair and went to bed. And still he sat there unmoving, like a corpse. It was like having some unnatural, doomed, unbearable presence in the room. She blew out the light, that she need not see him. But in the darkness it was worse.
At last he stirred—he rose. He came hesitating across to her.
“I’ll come back, Allaye,” he said quietly. “Be damned to them all.” She heard unspeakable pain in his voice.
“To whom?” she said, sitting up.
He did not answer, but put his arms round her.
“I’ll come back, and we’ll go to America,” he said.
“You’ll come back to me,” she whispered, in an ecstasy of pain and relief. It was not her affair, where they should go, so long as he really returned to her.
“I’ll come back,” he said.
“Sure?” she whispered, straining him to her.