‘I may call at nine?’ he said.
‘If you really have time. But I can manage quite well by myself, you know.’
‘What you can do is not the question. If I had my will you should never know a moment’s trouble as long as you lived.’
‘If I never have worse trouble than going to the railway station, I shall think myself lucky.’
‘Miss Mutimer—’
‘Yes?’
‘You won’t drop me altogether from your mind whilst you’re away?’
There was a change in his voice. He had abandoned the tone of excessive politeness, and spoke very much like a man who has feeling at the back of his words. Alice regarded him nervously.
‘I’m not going to be away more than a day or two,’ she said, smoothing a fold in her dress.
‘If it was only an hour or two I couldn’t bear to think you’d altogether forgotten me.’