“Shall I not see you again to-morrow evening?” he asked.
“No,” I answered. “I must not see you again till I have told my uncle everything.”
“You do not mean for weeks and weeks—till he is well enough to come home? How am I to live till then!”
“As I shall have to live. But I hope it will be but for a few days at most. Only, then, it will depend on what my uncle thinks of the thing.”
“Will he decide for you what you are to do?”
“Yes—I think so. Perhaps if he were—” I was on the point of saying, “like your mother,” but I stopped in time—or hardly, for I think he saw what I just saved myself from. It was but the other morning I made the discovery that, all our life together, John has never once pressed me to complete a sentence I broke off.
He looked so sorrowful that I was driven to add something.
“I don't think there is much good,” I said, “in resolving what you will or will not do, before the occasion appears, for it may have something in it you never reckoned on. All I can say is, I will try to do what is right. I cannot promise anything without knowing what my uncle thinks.”
We rose; he took me in his arms for just an instant; and we parted with the understanding that I was to write to him as soon as I had spoken with my uncle.