After what seemed to her hours, he spoke again. “I am thinking of going away, Edith,” he said, and his voice seemed to come to her from a long way off, and wake her from happy dreams.
“Going away?” she asked, with a new timidity. “Where?”
“To Europe, to Cairo, to the East.”
“Why?”
“Because I cannot stay here any longer.”
“Why not?” she found herself asking. “Why not?”
“Because I love you, dear, and because, if I stay here, I am afraid of what might happen. I want to go away, to get out into the great, wide places of the world, where air, and sunshine, and love are free and God-given. I hate New York and all it means. I cannot stay in it any longer—as things are.”
“Then I shall not see you—any more?” she asked in a voice from which she was unable to keep a quivering sense of loss, of pain.
“Not unless you will go with me,” he said suddenly, turning and looking into her face.