“So soon as that?” she said, her eyes opening and closing convulsively. “I must have been asleep; I didn’t realize that the time was so near.”
“Time is a mule; it always takes the opposite gait from that which you want it to take. This month has taken wings.” He gave a swift glance at her. “And I expect the next one to crawl—that is, after the voyage. I love the water.”
“As the doctor thinks the sea air so good for you, why don’t you cruise along the shores of France?”
“I may,” hesitatingly he answered; a sense of guilt came over him at the thought of his deception.
“How long do you expect to be gone?”
“I don’t know,” he said, absently; he knew this was not curiosity, but personal concern; “it may be three months, or three years.”
“Which do you expect it to be?”
“I do not expect, because to do that is to rob one’s self of the emotion of surprise, without which there is little pleasure in living.”
“I don’t believe I could be surprised any more. I know how little there is ahead. I have been arranging it all in my mind.”
He looked seaward. “How’s that?”