[CHAPTER IX]
QUICK GROWTH
He stayed beside the desk for a long time, turning the papers over and over, reading, as she long afterwards remembered, the beginning of one letter many times: "Dear Victoria—If you take the 3.45 from Waterloo that will get you to us in nice time for tea. The motor shall meet you at the station."
"The motor shall meet you at the station. . . . The motor shall meet you at the station. . . ."
Well, and why shouldn't it? How easy for motors to meet trains—that is, if you have a motor. But motors are expensive these days, and then there is the petrol—and the chauffeur must cost something. . . . But that's all right if you can drive yourself—drive yourself. . . . She pulled herself up. Where was she? Oh, in Victoria's sitting-room. How hot the room was! And the beginning of October. How hot and how empty! Then as though something cut her just beneath the heart, she started. She put her hand to her forehead. Her head was aching horribly. She would go home. She knew that Victoria would not mind.
Her only dominant impulse then was to be out of that house, that house that reminded her with every step she took of something that she must forget—but what she must forget she did not know.
In the hall she found her hat and coat. Beppo was there.
"Beppo," she said, "tell Miss Victoria that I have a headache and have gone home. She'll understand."
"Yes, miss," he said, grinning at her in that especially confidential way that he had with those whom he considered his friends.
In the street she took a taxi, something very foreign to her economic habits. But she wanted to hide herself from everybody. No one must see her and stop her and ask her questions that she could not answer. And she must get home quickly so that she might go into her own room and shut her door and be safe.