She scanned my face. "Stephen, you're not much changed. You're looking well.... But your eyes—they're dog-tired eyes. Have you been working too hard?"
"A conference—what did you call them once?—a Carnegieish conference in London. Hot weather and fussing work and endless hours of weak grey dusty speeches, and perhaps that clamber over there yesterday was too much. It was too much. In India I damaged a leg.... I had meant to rest here for a day."
"Well,—rest here."
"With you!"
"Why not? Now you are here."
"But—— After all, we've promised."
"It's none of our planning, Stephen."
"It seems to me I ought to go right on—so soon as breakfast is over."
She weighed that with just the same still pause, the same quiet moment of lips and eyes that I recalled so well. It was as things had always been between us that she should make her decision first and bring me to it.
"It isn't natural," she decided, "with the sun rising and the day still freshly beginning that you should go or that I should go. I've wanted to meet you like this and talk about things,—ten thousand times. And as for me Stephen I won't go. And I won't let you go if I can help it. Not this morning, anyhow. No. Go later in the day if you will, and let us two take this one talk that God Himself has given us. We've not planned it. It's His doing, not ours."