“Why should I be? I’ve had over a year. As happiness goes, that’s a lifetime.”
“Don’t speak as if yours were over.”
“Oh, it’s been good enough to be worth while!”
He sat silent for a while, meditatively considering his honest boot-tips. At length he spoke again, in a tone of sudden authority, such as came into his voice when business matters were being discussed. “You mustn’t come back alone to this empty house.”
She looked slowly about her. “No; I never want to see this house again.”
“Where shall you go, then?”
“After tomorrow? There’s a steamer sailing for the Mediterranean the next day. I think I shall just go down and get on board.”
“Alone?”
She shed a sudden smile on him. “Will you come with me?”
At the question he sprang up out of his armchair with the headlong haste of a young man. The movement upset a little table at his elbow; but he let the table lie.