She sighed. "Precisely, and now we're back again to what I said just now. Whatever is the good of talking to me about it?"
"We might talk about other things," he suggested. "I should very much like to get away, too, for a few hours."
She hid her face in her hands, leaning her elbows on the table, and he waited patiently for her answer.
"Why don't you finish your breakfast?" she asked, when she looked up after what seemed to him a long interval of silence.
"I have. I don't want anything more," he said.
She got up then, and he thought she was going to leave him without deigning to take any further notice of his request, but when she was half-way across the room, she looked back and said, "Can you be ready in ten minutes?"
He started forward with the eagerness of a dog beckoned by its mistress. "Do you really mean that?" he asked, hardly understanding his own excitement.
She stood still regarding him with an expression that was half-amused and half-disdainful. "I didn't know you were so keen on long walks," she remarked, "or on getting away from here. Isn't this rather a new departure for you?"
The look of eagerness left his face. "Perhaps it is," he said stiffly. "And it's hardly likely to be much of a success if—if you're going to take that sort of tone."
"I told you that I didn't want you to come," she replied, and there was something of defiance in her tone and in the pose of her firm, upright figure.