The car was sparsely occupied and the section opposite was quite empty, and, with a sense of being quite alone with Viola, he lightly began: "I feel like a truant school-boy, and I'm wondering what Weissmann will say to-morrow morning when his 'first-assistant' fails to appear."
"I hope you are not neglecting your work for—for us," she said, losing a little of her brightness.
"Nothing will suffer. I do not profess to be the main prop of our laboratory, and, besides, I don't care. I'm off for a holiday, whether or no." At the word "holiday" Clarke's grisly shadow rose between them and would not down. To the suicide his holiday was due.
Viola again seemed to dimly divine his thought, for she hesitatingly said: "I am troubled about Mr. Clarke. I must write him a letter and tell him that I don't hate him now. I really begin to feel sorry for him, and I wish I hadn't been so hard."
"You have nothing to reproach yourself for, and you would better let him pass entirely out of your life, and be glad the wrench is over," he decisively replied.
She sighed and shivered a little. "He knew we were deserting him. His look haunts me. I wish I had stopped to say good-bye. He will be very lonely without us."
"He is too fanatic to win my sympathy, and he has forfeited yours."
"But he was sincere, professor. He really wanted to make the world happier."
He was resolute to keep her mind clear of all thought of Clarke, and imperiously said: "Don't call me professor, and let's talk of other and pleasanter things than Clarke. We are well out of his shadow-world, and you are never to re-enter it. I want you to forget that you ever sat in a 'circle' or heard a 'voice.'"
"Oh, I can't expect to pass entirely out of that," she exclaimed, as though the possibility came near her for the first time. "On mother's account I must continue to sit now and then. She couldn't live without her communion with papa and Waltie."