She hesitated.
“I’m going to try to sublet the flat,” she answered unwillingly at last.
For she still felt aggrieved at his defection, as she considered it, at the fact that, when a powerful friend like himself might have done much to support Gerard and to create a favourable impression by standing up for him boldly, Mr. Candover, who had professed so much affection for them both, should have remained silent and aloof.
“Won’t you let me do the business for you? A man is less likely to be taken advantage of than a woman, you know.”
“Thank you, I would rather arrange it all myself. It gives me something to do.”
“May I come round to-morrow and bring you some books?”
“Thank you, I have no time for reading now.”
“If I were to come, then, should I be told you were out, as I was told just now?” persisted he.
“I—I think so. I leave the same message for all my friends. If they were to persist in seeing me, I should have to go away. Really I should have thought you might understand, Mr. Candover, how very, very retired a life I must live now.”
It was very neatly worded, but Mr. Candover understood. Audrey had to be discreet; she was a good and true woman, and the enjoyments which she had loved, the gaieties in which she had taken a foremost and brilliant part with her young husband by her side to share them, were now to be put away, forgotten, to give place to the austerity of the widowhood she professed to have entered.