Her tone had a pleading wistfulness in it, her eyes were soft with tenderness, and the simple, homely words had the force of their simplicity. Kit was drawing on her gloves very slowly, still not looking up.
"Tell me two things more," she said, with a tremor in her voice. "Do you shrink from me? And the wrong I have done to—to your unborn child, what of that?"
Lily rose and kissed her on the forehead.
"I have answered you," she said.
Kit got up, hands trembling and with twitching mouth.
"Let me go," she said. "Let me go at once. Come if I send for you."
She hurried from the room without further good-bye, and Lily was too wise to try to detain her. Her carriage was still waiting, and she stepped quickly into it.
"Home," she said.
Outside the air was brisk with spring, the streets clean and dry, and populous with alert faces. Shop-windows winked and sparkled in the lemon-coloured sunshine; at a corner was a barrow full of primroses from the country, and the news of the day lay on the cobbles of the crossing, with stones to keep it from flying, in scarlet advertisement. A shouting wind swept down Piccadilly, hats flapped and struggled, errand-boys whistled and chaffed, buses towered and nodded, hansoms jingled and passed, but for once Kit was blind to this splendid spectacle of life. Her own brougham moved noiselessly and swiftly on its India-rubber tires, and she knew only, and that with a blank heaviness of spirit, that each beat of the horses' hoofs brought her a pace nearer to her home, to her husband—a step closer to what she was going to do.
She got out at her own door, and, to her question whether her husband was in, was told that he was up in his room. He had ordered the carriage, however, which brought her back, to wait, as he was going out.