So Annabel departed with the slightest of farewells, wearing a thick travelling veil, and sitting far back in the corner of a closed carriage. Anna watched her from the windows, watched the carriage jolt away along the cobbled street and disappear. Then she stepped back into the empty room and stood for a moment looking down upon the scattered fragments of her last canvas.
“It is a night of endings,” she murmured to herself. “Perhaps for me,” she added, with a sudden wistful look out of the bare high window, “a night of beginnings.”
Chapter III
ANNA? OR ANNABEL?
Sir John was wholly unable to understand the laugh and semi-ironical cheer which greeted his entrance to the smoking-room of the English Club on the following evening. He stood upon the threshold, dangling his eye-glasses in his fingers, stolid, imperturbable, mildly interrogative. He wanted to know what the joke against him was—if any.
“May I enquire,” he asked smoothly, “in what way my appearance contributes to your amusement? If there is a joke I should like to share it.”
A fair-haired young Englishman looked up from the depths of his easy chair.