They had reached the foot of the staircase now and she went up two stairs before she turned and looked at him, their eyes almost on a level. Her forehead was puckered into a little anxious frown. "Why have you changed your mind?" she asked.
He was warmed to a boldness that he had not dared hitherto. "I've been thinking over all our talk this afternoon," he said, "particularly yours, and I realised how absolutely right you were in despising me for hanging on here, and I felt that I could not stay another twenty-four hours."
She stretched out her arm and rested her fingers on the magnificent width of the mahogany handrail. "Why?" she asked.
"I could not bear the thought that you despised me," he said.
"I never did," she replied gently; "only I was sorry."
He was too drunk with the vapours of his own resolve to catch the finer significance of her answer. "It's frightfully kind of you to say that," he said, "but you've made me despise myself, and anyhow I'm going. So will you ask Mr Kenyon if he can see me to-morrow morning?"
She smiled faintly at the impetuosity of his boasting.
"I'm afraid he can't," she said. "He won't be here to-morrow."
"Not here?" he repeated in astonishment, and then as the implications of that unexpected news became clearer to him, he added, "Then it's possible that I might—that we could have another walk or something?"