"Come where?" she said, falteringly.
"Eastward. To Europe."
"You will go with me?"
"Hardly that. But I shall be there to receive you."
"You are going back?"
"In a month, or thereabouts."
"Oh, Mr. Drayton! Why?"
"Well, for several reasons. My coming here was an experiment. It might have succeeded, but it was made too late. I am too old for this young country. I love it, but I can be of no service to it. On the contrary, so far as I was anything, I should be in the way. It does not need me, and I have been an exile so long as to have lost my right to inflict myself upon it. Yet I am glad to have been here; the little time that I have been here has recompensed me for all the sorrows of my life, and I shall never forget an hour of it as long as I live."
"Are you quite sure that your country does not want you—need you?"
"I should not like my assurance to be made more sure."