“I’ll fight it out in Munich,” he answered grimly.
“Then God help you and—the songs.”
Carl pressed the strong man’s hand that held his.
“There’s no need of praying for you,” he answered.
Eleanor stepped forward in a daze.
“But Carl—” she faltered.
He seized her hand, gripped it for a second, and without a word started away.
“Carl,” she called after him, “wait! We’re going back to the house with you.”
CHAPTER XXVII
IN WHICH EVERYONE LEARNS SOMETHING
Twice now Eleanor had seen in a man’s eyes the dumb pain of an unuttered tragedy,—once when Barnes had gone back to New York; again this afternoon, when Carl had bade her good-by and been driven off down the saffron road. In the first case she had played no part, though the ache of it still haunted her; in the second it was clear that she was the direct cause. And yet as she stood by the sitting-room window after supper and retraced this last summer, she saw nothing that she could have managed differently. Incident had followed incident with apparent inevitability. Of course she should have been surer of herself before giving Carl such encouragement, but under the circumstances of the moment she had acted with what wisdom she then had. The unrest, the doubts developing into certainty, had followed later.