"Of course," I said. "What else could I do?"
"Four years!" she said. "What is to become of me?"
"The time will soon go by," I answered, "and then I'll come back to you and everything will be right."
"You seem to think of everyone but me," she said hotly. "You promised so that your father would die easy, and that's the end of it. If you are going to be bound by such a thing as that you're nothing more than an impractical idealist."
"I passed my word and a Carstairs never breaks a promise."
"You mean that, Jim? You mean that you are going away to ... carry out that absurd promise?"
"It's not absurd," I declared.
"I think it is," she said wilfully. "If you go, you need never come back."
"I am going," I said steadily. "As an honorable man there is no other course open to me. I'm sorry that you look at it this way, but I can't do anything else."
"At last I know how much you think of me," she said with that little touch of anger with which a woman always defends the indefensible. "You never did care for me."