The young man stood with his jaw hanging. He was utterly nonplussed. Good had gone out of his life as suddenly, as unreasonably, as amazingly as he had come into it. He racked his brains futilely for an explanation. Had he been a trifle younger it is probable that he would have wept.
It was the end of the day, and darkness had fallen. But even if it had been the first hour of the morning he would have gone home at once. The office had become unendurable.
He found Judith having tea with Imrie. Though of a thoroughly objective nature, not given to unnecessary straying into imaginative by-paths, particularly those with unpleasant endings, Roger was far from insensible to the grim irony of the situation. He almost laughed as he told his news.
Judith received the tidings more calmly than he had anticipated. Indeed, he could not recall, subsequently, that she said anything at all. It is possible, however, that she said more than he heard. The fact was that rather more instinctively than consciously, he watched, most closely, the effect of the intelligence upon Imrie.
But whatever Imrie's emotions, he concealed them well. He said very little, managing to express his surprise and regret with an apparently quite genuine sincerity. In a few moments he recalled a forgotten engagement, and left. It was not lost upon Roger that his tea was untasted....
Judith, however, recalled him to less recondite speculation.
"It's absurd, of course," she said in a voice which struck him as very strange and mechanical. "He can't leave us like this. It's too ridiculous." For a moment he thought her feeling was one of resentment. "Where can I reach him?" she asked abruptly. He concluded that it was something quite different.
"God knows," he said. "But don't worry. It's just a tantrum. He'll be back."
"Did you ever know him to have a tantrum?" demanded Judith, almost fiercely. Roger was startled. He had never seen his sister look or act just like that before. He tried, unsuccessfully, to guess what it all signified.
"Call up the office and see if you can get his address," she ordered. Obediently he went to the telephone. When he returned, she was pacing slowly to and fro before the fireplace. Her mouth was curiously set, with what sentiments he could not tell, and her eyebrows were drawn together in two deep incisions. At her unspoken question he shook his head.