Darrow broke out: “It’s I who ought to go!”
She kept her small pale smile. “What good would that do any of us—now?”
He covered his face with his hands. “Good God!” he groaned. “How could I tell?”
“You couldn’t tell. We neither of us could.” She seemed to turn the problem over critically. “After all, it might have been you instead of me!”
He took another distracted turn about the room and coming back to her sat down in a chair at her side. A mocking hand seemed to dash the words from his lips. There was nothing on earth that he could say to her that wasn’t foolish or cruel or contemptible...
“My dear,” he began at last, “oughtn’t you, at any rate, to try?”
Her gaze grew grave. “Try to forget you?”
He flushed to the forehead. “I meant, try to give Owen more time; to give him a chance. He’s madly in love with you; all the good that’s in him is in your hands. His step-mother felt that from the first. And she thought—she believed——”
“She thought I could make him happy. Would she think so now?”
“Now...? I don’t say now. But later? Time modifies ... rubs out ... more quickly than you think.... Go away, but let him hope.... I’m going too—we’re going—” he stumbled on the plural—“in a very few weeks: going for a long time, probably. What you’re thinking of now may never happen. We may not all be here together again for years.”