"Yes, I was going out. I have sat alone with my thoughts all day, and I don't want to end my life in a lunatic asylum. I want a little change, that is all. If you will come in and talk to me instead, that will do as well. Any sort of distraction, you see," she added, with a hard little laugh, "just to keep me from—"
She did not finish her sentence. He looked at her gravely, and from her to the waiting carriage. He suddenly realized how the altered condition of affairs must affect her.
"I shall have to come and see you in a day or two," he said. "But now—" he hesitated.
"Why not now, then?" she asked.
"You have an engagement," he said.
She shook her head.
"I was only going somewhere to supper. I was going to call for Eva Fanesborough, and I suppose we should have had some bridge afterwards. Come in instead, Lawrence. I can telephone to her."
Already a presage of evil seemed to be forming itself in his mind. He would have given anything to have thought of some valid excuse.
"Your carriage—"
"Pooh!" she answered. "John, I shall not want you to-night," she said to the coachman. "Come!"