"I am going to bed," she answered quietly. "Good-night, Owen."
And without waiting for a reply she opened the door and went slowly out of the room.
CHAPTER XXV
Quite calmly and quietly Toni went about her preparations for departure.
The scene in the library had turned the scale in favour of her flight. Owen had openly avowed his opinion that their hasty marriage had been a mistake; and now that the passion of rage and jealousy which had possessed her had died away, Toni could see no other method of relieving the situation than by leaving Greenriver at once.
She would go away with Leonard Dowson, thereby leaving the way open for Owen to divorce her. Her own future life occupied but the smallest fraction of her thoughts. Somehow her power of visualizing the future seemed to stop short with her departure from her home; and although she had a very clear vision of Owen, relieved from the incubus of her presence, and free to devote himself to the work which, she had persuaded herself, meant more to him than any purely domestic happiness, she never gave even a passing thought to her own existence when once she had severed the ties which bound her to the old house by the river.
Very early in the morning of the day following her interview with Dowson she had posted a note to him. There was only one short sentence on the little sheet of paper—only three words; but she know it would be enough.
"I will come. Toni."
That was all; and yet as she wrote the little sentence, Toni had a queer, stifling sensation as though she were indeed signing her own death-warrant.