"No, we can't leave it like this," he said. "Let's drive on for a little. Just for ten minutes, Elizabeth." He was on the near side of the carriage and tried to prevent her getting up.
"Come to your senses!" she said.
"But it is impossible to meet Edith like this!" he said. "She will see——"
He considered that for a moment. What if she did see? Was not that exactly what he desired? But Elizabeth interrupted him.
"She won't, because she mustn't," she said. "I can do my share, you must do yours. Get out, please!"
Next moment he followed her into the hotel. At the door of the sitting-room she paused a moment, feeling suddenly tired and incapable, and she looked appealingly at him as he joined her.
"Edward, do help me!" she said. "I rely on you!"
The tremendous pressure at which she had been living all day helped Elizabeth now, for reaction had not come yet, and whatever at that moment she had been set to do she would have done it with ten thousand horse-power. She made a rush of it across the room to where Edith lay, dropping fan, gloves, handkerchief on her way, and it seemed that Edward's help would chiefly consist in listening.
"Oh, my dear," she cried, "we've gone quite mad, both Edward and I! There is nothing in the world but Brunnhilde and Siegfried!"
She kissed Edith, and went on breathlessly, turning the deep tumult of her soul into the merest froth.