"Wait? We've waited long enough.... Seven years—for the inevitable to happen.... I'm tired."
"Of waiting?"
"Of everything."
And that, I saw at once, was the look in her face that no younger woman could easily have had—that look of being tired of everything.
The anger that had made her tear up Severn's letter had spent itself, and for over an hour we talked together very quietly about Terry and what might happen. She, like June, was fearful that the blow would be too much for him. I tried to reassure her by saying that lately there had been distinct signs of the beginnings of recovery, but that seemed to make her more apprehensive than ever. "To hit a man when he's down isn't as bad as to hit him when he's just coming up," she said. And then there was the strain of the fighting campaign that Geoffrey was planning for him—how would he stand that?
How would he? I wondered myself. I wondered how soon I should hear the result of June's momentous interview, and what degree of catastrophe there would be to learn.... And then, at the moment of deepest gloom, there came a sharp knock on my outer door. I went, and found one of the End House chauffeurs with a letter in his hand. I thought immediately of Severn—that the letter was some urgent summons from him, either to me or to Helen. Yet he would have telephoned if anything had gone seriously amiss. A dozen vague alternative conjectures suggested themselves; and all before the man said: "From Miss June, sir. She told me to bring it to you."
"Miss June? I thought she was at Hindhead?"
"So she is, sir. I drove her down this morning, and she sent me back this evening with the car and this letter."
"She's not coming back herself, then?"
"Not to-night, at any rate, sir. She's staying at the hotel."