"A pity?" said Rendel, looking at her.
"Yes," she said. "It would have been so delightful."
"Would have been?" said Rendel, still amazed. "Why don't you say 'will be'? Do you mean to say you don't want to go?"
"I don't think I could go," Rachel said, with a slight surprise in her voice. "How could I?"
Rendel said nothing, but still looked at her as though finding it difficult to realise her point of view.
"How could I leave my father?" she said, putting into words the thing that seemed to her so absolutely obvious that she had hardly thought it necessary to speak it.
"Do you think you couldn't?" Rendel said slowly.
"Oh, Frank, how would it be possible?" she said. "We could not leave him alone here, and it would be much, much too far for him to go."
"Of course. I had not thought of his attempting it," said Rendel, truthfully enough, with a sinking dread at his heart that perhaps after all the fair prospect he had been gazing upon was going to prove nothing but a mirage.
"You do agree, don't you?" she said, looking at him anxiously. "You do see?"