"Yes, I had intended to buy some presents for the girls."
"Then you'd better take a taxicab for the morning. I suppose you know the names of the shops you want to go to?"
"Oh, yes. I know the names. Are you going to the theatre?"
"I've got to change a few lines in the play, and the sooner I go about it the better."
"Then don't bother about me, dear. I'll just put on my long coat over this dress and go out right after breakfast."
"But you haven't eaten anything," he remarked, glancing at her plate.
"I wasn't hungry. The fresh air will do me good. It has turned so much warmer, and the snow is all melting."
As she spoke, she rose from the table and began to prepare herself for the street, putting on the black hat with the ostrich tip and the bunch of violets on one side, which didn't seem just right since she had come to New York, and carefully wrapping the ends of her fur neck-piece around her throat. It was already ten o'clock, for Oliver had slept late, and she must be hurrying if she hoped to get through her shopping before luncheon. While she dressed, a wan spirit of humour entered into her, and she saw how absurd it was that she should rush about from shop to shop, buying things that did not matter in order to fill a life that mattered as little as they did. To her, whose mental outlook had had in it so little humour, it seemed suddenly that the whole of life was ridiculous. Why should she have sat there, pouring Oliver's coffee and talking to him about insignificant things, when her heart was bursting with this sense of something gone out of existence, with this torturing realization of the irretrievable failure of love?
Taking up her muff and her little black bag from the bureau, she looked back at him with a smile as she turned towards the door.
"Good-bye. Will you be here for luncheon?"