“Anyhow,” he said, “it’s good-by now.”
She raised her head and kissed him. For a moment he crushed her against him; then, with just the lightest kiss on her young head, he let her go, took up his hat, and hurried off. He knew she had come to the door to watch him go, but he did not look back.
All gray the harbor was that morning, and noisy with the hoarse din of whistles and fog horns; but Charles Hackett stood on deck, in the rain, to see the last of it.
A lucky thing, he thought, that Wick hadn’t brought her down to see him off! Lucky that last night Wick had looked at his face, not hers! It had been so plain there to read—the doubt, the question, the fear, in the eyes of Wickham’s wife. She didn’t know yet, but she was beginning to know.
“Why am I to have no life? Why am I to be shut out, denied everything that is real?”
She had turned with her unspoken question not to Wickham, but to his brother. Charles had come to her, almost as if the sun of the tropics had risen in the cool skies of her homeland. He had danced with her, talked to her, with his vivid smile, his immeasurable careless vitality. He had had for her not only his innate charm, but the charm of the unknown.
Even his very shabbiness had enchanted her, because it was a regal thing. He, too, might have had his pockets well filled, but he had not cared for money. He had thrown everything away, and had laughed a careless laugh.
Then he had seen what was coming. He had seen the doubt, the dismay, which she herself did not understand. He had seen her turn to him, not to her husband.
Well, she wouldn’t turn to him any more, for he would not be there. There would only be Wickham, chivalrous and quiet. She would forget the doubt and the question that would never be asked and never be answered. It was essential for Charles to go, never to be there again.
The rain and the mist almost hid the shores from his sight now. He could see only the tops of great buildings, like castles on a mountain top. His girl was there, the girl who had clung to him so.