"Oh, we will arrange it. I will leave The Gotham and take a room down-town, and you and Isolde shall go."
"Very well," said Mariana, sullenly, and left the room.
The next few days brought a wave of heat, and Algarcife made arrangements to send Mariana and the child away. He gave notice at The Gotham, and secured a room upon Fourth Street, and in spare moments assisted Mariana with the packing. Then there was some delay in the payment for the articles he had written, and Mariana's departure was postponed. "Get your things ready," said Algarcife, when the heat grew more intense and Isolde drooped. "The moment that the money arrives, you can start. It was due a week ago."
So Mariana continued her packing with nervous hands. She was divided between anxiety for Anthony and anxiety for the child, and she was profoundly depressed on her own account.
"If it wasn't for Isolde, I wouldn't go a step," she declared, standing before a trunk into which she was putting cans of baby's milk. "I feel as if I could weep gallons of tears—only I haven't time."
Miss Ramsey, who was rocking Isolde, smiled encouragingly. "The change will do you good," she responded, "and I am sure you need it. You are quite ghastly."
Mariana sighed and looked at herself in the glass. "I suppose so," she remarked, a little wistfully. "I might be thirty."
And she went on packing. "Of course we may not leave for weeks," she explained, "and yet I feel driven. The uncertainty is horrible."
But Algarcife, coming in at dusk, found her more cheerful. She kissed him with something of her old warmth, and talked almost animatedly while he ate his supper.
"I shall miss you so," she said, "and yet I do wish we could get off. Isolde has been very fretful all day, and is badly broken out with heat. She has just fallen asleep."