It seemed a very short distance to Corporation Road. It seemed untrue that it was only four days since he had stood at the door with her for the first time. They went up the steps, and she did not turn the knob.
"Are you coming in?" she murmured. "I daresay Tattie is back."
"Do you know I think I'd rather say 'au revoir' to you alone."
"Au revoir," she said. Her hand was formal. He was rather chilled.
"You mean to post me that line?" he questioned.
She nodded. And then in the darkness of the doorway, she laughed, and began to hum the song that he had warned her not to sing.
CHAPTER XVIII
He found the evening very long. He was restless. The memory of her kiss was exquisite, but it did not make for repose. It seemed to him intolerably stupid that he was boring himself in the billiard-room of the Grand when Corporation Road was so near. Still she had taken leave of him—if he went he might be unwelcome to her, she might be disappointing to him.
Early next afternoon he received the line she had promised. It arrived with letters from the Company. They were such deeply grateful letters that they hurt him a little when he read them, but he guessed which was hers, and he opened that one first. Mixed with the pleasure with which he opened it there was the curiosity, even the—he would have refused to acknowledge it—even the slight touch of apprehension with which a man who likes a woman better than he knows her always opens her first letter.