“He’s so reckless,” she thought. “He told me he was all alone in New York. There’s no one to talk to him.”
That public reprimand had come to him just after she had told him that she was leaving. Perhaps that ring had been in his pocket at the time—the ring that he must have bought with such a high heart.
Through the tea room window she could look out on the crowded street. That was the world out there—the world he lived in, hurried, careless, and jostling; and he was pushing his way through it, hurried himself and careless and solitary.
“I can’t let him go like this, without a word,” she thought. “Perhaps if I just spoke to him—nicely, it might help.”
It was hard for her to do that, for it was he who should have come to her, should have asked her not to go away, should have tried to set himself right with her.
“Now he’ll think I didn’t really mind his behaving that way,” she thought. “He’ll be hard to manage, if I encourage him.”
But she had to do it. Reluctantly, with a heavy heart, she telephoned to the address he had given her.
“Randall’s not in,” said a cheerful masculine voice. “I expect him any minute. Can I take a message?”
She hesitated.
“Yes, please,” she said at last. “If you’ll tell him that Miss Graham is leaving for Hartford on the five o’clock train, and that she’d like to see him at the Grand Central for a moment before she goes.”