"Yes"—Fergusson still spoke fast and nervously,—"I have come to rather a sudden decision, but I feel it is a wise one. I have made up my mind to go abroad, to begin life in a new country. The old one is over-crowded—we are all finding that fact out more and more, and I am proposing to go to the Far West. It has always appealed to me—that free life in a big, new country."
"But your poor people—your people in South London," Cicely interrupted, a sick pain gnawing at her heart; "surely they want you?"
He shrugged his shoulders a little, and smiled.
"I am not indispensable to them, or to anyone"—the last words he spoke under his breath—"and I believe there is plenty of work waiting for me, on the other side of the world. I have not made up my mind to this hurriedly, but it seems the best and wisest thing to do."
"I wonder why?" Cicely began slowly, her blue eyes looking full into those troubled brown ones. "It seems"—she broke off, leaving her sentence unfinished, her eyes dropping suddenly, because of what she read in those other eyes.
"Does it seem to you a mad idea?—an act of impulse?" he asked, his glance travelling hungrily over her down-bent face. "I have not come to the decision impulsively. It is the best—the only thing to do." The last part of the speech dropped hurriedly from his lips, he drew in his breath sharply, almost as if he were being tried to the limits of his strength. "I—could not—go away without coming to say good-bye to you—and Miss Moore—and Baba," he added jerkily.
"We should have been very angry with you if you had done such a horrid thing," Cicely answered lightly, so lightly, that a hurt look crept into the brown eyes watching her. He had not dared to hope she could by any remote possibility care for him, so he said to himself. He had never dreamt such wildly improbable dreams, but he had thought she would be a little sorry to lose a friend for ever; and when he left England, he intended to leave it for ever, to cut adrift from all old friendships, all old ties. And yet she looked up at him with laughter in her eyes, and talked brightly of being angry with him, if he had gone without a farewell! He felt oddly hurt and ruffled, and Cicely, as keenly aware of the hurt, as she had been a moment before of the significant look in his eyes, only knew that her own heart was beating with an excess of joy that frightened her—only realised that the game lay in her own small hands, if only—she could play the game as it should be played.
"You—have not given up your house and practice—yet?" she questioned, and her tone was still brisk, almost business-like, and there was a hurt note in his voice as he answered—
"My house is in an agent's hands for letting, and I am only going on with the work, until I can find someone to take it over; as soon as everything is settled here, I shall be off. To tell you the honest truth, I shall be glad to go." Cicely's heart leapt in an insane way, because of the sudden ring of bitterness in his accents, she moved a step nearer to him (they had both remained standing since her entrance), she had even uttered the words, "I wish"—when the door was flung wide open, and James announced, "Mrs. Deane."
Cicely was not quite sure whether she most wished to laugh or cry, when this very ordinary little acquaintance, a walking mass of platitudes, propriety, and dullness, walked into the room. Too well she knew that Mrs. Deane, once established in her drawing-room, would not be quickly dislodged, and, with an inward sigh, she resigned herself to her fate, whilst Fergusson held out his hand in farewell.