"I'll do whatever you want, Anne," he said heavily. "Everything on earth I can do. But I've got to think. I'll tell Martin I've had marching orders, or some lie. He knows the case, and can do everything as well as I could. I'll clear out to Heerut. I've got to see Ayeshi. In the meantime, you'll have breathing space to think things over too—and to decide. You can let me know." He went to the door and there hesitated and looked back at her with pitying wistfulness. "Anne, I don't repent much what I did to your father—I can't—but you didn't deserve to be hurt. And I've hurt you. I can't forgive myself that—ever."
He waited an instant. She did not move and he went out closing the door softly behind him.
CHAPTER VIII
RETURN
"When I heard folks say the place was haunted I just laughed in their faces," Mrs. Smithers asserted moodily. "I don't hold with ghosts and them sort, and in a general way I don't believe in them. But I believe in this ghost all right. We've tried to scrub it out, but it won't go and it's got the grouch on us for trying. It's just sucking the polish out of the furniture. And it's sucking the life out of me; I know that."
She turned to her companion lying curled up in the big basket chair and challenged contradiction with her own appearance. Sigrid looked back at her gravely.
"Your wig's crooked, Smithy dear. Of late its angle has been persistently drunken."
"What's it matter!" Mrs. Smithers returned. "Who cares? We might as well be drunk for all the notice these stuck-up nobodies take of us. What's the use of being respectable, if there's no one to see? Might as well fade away, comfy, that's my opinion." Whereupon, suiting her action to her words, she snatched the offending erection from her head, sat on it, and proceeded to rumple up the short grey hair till the last vestige of propriety was lost in a ludicrously rakish disorder. "Well, I've been respectable for your sake for two solid years, Sigrid, and it's nigh done for me. Now I'm myself again, and I mean to stick to meself or bust; so there."
Sigrid gave a laugh that ended with a sigh.
"Your nice, wicked, unprincipled self, Smithy! It reminds me of old times."