“I went to my room with a headache, but when I looked out and saw the moonlight I thought a turn alone would do me good. They’d given me the great guest-chamber where Anne Boleyn once slept; and it has little stone steps leading from a terrace into the garden. So it was easy enough.” Her lip quivered. “I don’t know how women would get on without headaches, Andy.”
Andy smiled tenderly, for all his unhappiness, at the queer mixture which is a woman: and when a man has learned to do that, he understands a great deal.
“Poor little girl,” he said.
But that somehow touched a chord of human and dear things that nearly broke their hearts, and without knowing how, they found themselves clinging together, their faces wet with tears.
“Good-bye,” said Andy, trying to go.
“Good-bye,” said Elizabeth, clinging to him.
Then it was Elizabeth who tried to go, and Andy who held her fast.
They came so, nearer and nearer to the little stone staircase, and when Elizabeth put her foot on the first step, Andy felt as if his life were going from him. Silently she went and silently he watched her go, with beads of sweat standing on his forehead that the night wind changed to drops of ice.
At the top she turned and said—
“Good-bye.”