He was too busy to dwell upon it much, but concluded his partner was homesick.
Albert was beginning to have a vague under-consciousness of his real feeling toward the girl, but he fought off the acknowledgment of it as long as possible. His mind moved in a circle, coming back to the one point ceaselessly—a dreary prospect, in which the slender girl-figure had no place—and each time the prospect grew more intolerably blank, and the pain in his heart more acute and throbbing.
When he faced her that night, after they had returned from a final skating party down on the river, he was as far from a solution as ever. He had avoided all reference to their separation, and now he stood as a man might at the parting of two paths, saying: "I will not choose; I can not choose. I will wait for some sign, some chance thing, to direct me."
They stood opposite each other, each feeling that there was more to be said; the girl tender, her eyes cast down, holding her hands to the fire; he shivering, but not with cold. He had a vague knowledge of the vast importance of the moment, and he hesitated to speak.
"It's almost spring again, isn't it? And you've been here—" she paused and looked up with a daring smile—"seems as if you'd been here always."
It was about half past eight. Mrs. Welsh was setting her bread in the kitchen; they could hear her moving about. Hartley was downtown finishing up his business.
Albert's throat grew dry and his limbs trembled. His pause was ominous; the girl's smile died away as he took a seat without looking at her.
"Well, Maud, I suppose—you know—we're going away to-morrow."
"Oh, must you? But you'll come back?"
"I don't expect to—I don't see how."