He said, at once with bewilderment and with increasing constraint: "Or possibly you don't wish me to know when you are going?"
Then Mary Wing turned in the dying light, and said, not dramatically at all, but in her quietest everyday voice:—
"No, I don't mind your knowing. I'm not going."
And still the authority on women did not understand.
"Not going—when?"
"I've decided not to accept the appointment."
And, sitting down, suddenly and purposelessly at her desk, the young woman of the Career added in a rather let-down voice: "I haven't told anybody at all yet. I just decided—last night."
Then came silence into the twilight sitting-room, surely a silence like none here before it. In the Wings' best chair, the caller sat still as a marble man, while the little noises from the street grew loud and louder. And then, quite abruptly and mechanically, he began to rise, exactly as if an unseen spirit were lifting him bodily by the hair. And he could feel all the blood drawing out of his face.
"Not going to accept the appointment," he echoed suddenly, in a queer voice.
And then, as if so reminded that his tongue possessed this accomplishment, he all at once burst out: "Why—but—why! You have accepted it! It was settled!—long ago! Not going!—what do you mean? Why, what's happened?"