“I hate to leave you looking like this,” he continued. “I’m sure you’re not well.”
“Leave me!” she exclaimed with a startled emphasis. “You’re not going to leave me?”
Her face, full of alarmed protest, astonished him.
“Of course I’m not going to leave you. I’m going down to San Francisco on Monday for two weeks, that’s all. Business of Black Dan’s.”
She sat upright, bracing her hands against the edge of the table and said, almost with violence:
“Don’t go. I don’t want you to go. You mustn’t go.”
“But, my dear little girl, it’s only for two weeks, perhaps less. I expect to be back Friday evening. I know it’s lonely for you, but you know we have to put up with a good deal on our way through this world. You’ve found that out, honey. We’ve got to have our philosophy pretty handy sometimes.”
“Oh, philosophy! I haven’t got any. I only seem to have feelings.”
She rose from her chair, the Colonel watching her with anxiously knit brows. Her distress at the thought of his leaving her filled him with uneasy surprise. It seemed so disproportioned to the cause. She passed round the table and came to a halt beside him.
“Can’t you put it off?” she said, trying to speak in her old coaxing way. “Put it off till I go to England to visit Rosamund.”