‘Only that it is so dreadful, saying good-bye!’
‘My darling!—by the way you talk you might be going for good and all. And it is only for a week.’
She did not answer, but pressed the hand that closed over her own.
During the half-hour’s run to Waterloo he continued to glance furtively, and not without apprehension, at her face. It was unusually pale; dark rings encircled the eyes, and the eyes were unusually brilliant.
They had a compartment to themselves. He held her hand all the way, and she his, like a pair of moonstruck young lovers; and, for the most part, they were as silent.
‘You have not been yourself these last few days,’ he said at length; ‘I am glad you are going.’
‘And I am glad of that,’ she answered.
Her tone was odd.
‘But I shall be wretched while you are gone,’ he quickly added.
She made no reply to this; it seemed to her an afterthought. But, if it was, it grew upon him with swift and miserable effect as the minutes remaining to them gradually diminished. When they drove up to Liverpool Street he was in the depths of dejection.