Winifred turned away from him, went to the window and looked out, seeing nothing, for the eyes of the soul were busy. Her lips were now firmly set, and during the minute that she stood there a rapid train of thought and purpose passed through her mind. She had promised to give him up, and she would go through with it. It was for him—and it was sweet, though bitter, to be a martyr. But she recognized clearly that so long as he knew where to find her the thing could never be done. She made up her mind to be gone from those lodgings by that hour the next day, and to be buried from him in some other part of the great city. She would never in that case be able to ask him for help to keep going, without giving her address, but in a few days she would have work at the new bookbinder’s. This well settled in her mind, she turned inward to him, saying:
“Miss Goodman will soon bring up tea. Come, let us be happy to-day. You want to know if I love you? Well, the answer is yes, yes; so now you know, and can never doubt. I want you to stay a long time this afternoon, and I invite you to be my dear, dear guest on one condition—that you don’t ask me why I told you that awful fib the day before yesterday, for I don’t mean to tell you!”
Of course Carshaw took her again in his arms, and, without breaking her conditions, stayed with her till nearly six. She was sedately gay all the time, but, on kissing him good-by, she wept quietly, and as quietly she said to her landlady when he was gone:
“Miss Goodman, I am going away to-morrow—for always, I’m afraid.”
Soon after this six o’clock struck. At ten minutes past the hour Miss Goodman brought up two letters.
Without looking at the handwriting on the envelopes, Winifred tore open one, laying the other on a writing-desk, this latter being from the agent in answer to the one she had written. She had told him that she did not mean to keep the appointment at East Orange, and he now assured her that he had certainly never made any appointment for her at East Orange. The thing was some blunder. New York impresarios did not make appointments in East Orange. He asked for an explanation.
Pity that she did not open this letter before the other—or the other was of a nature to drive the existence of the agent’s letter—of any letter—out of her head; for days afterward that all-important message lay on the table unopened.
The note which Winifred did read was from the bookbinding manager who had all but engaged her that day. He now informed her that he would have no use for her services. The clergyman in the taxi had followed very effectively on Winifred’s trail.
She was stunned by this final blow. Her eyes gazed into vacancy. What she was to do now she did not know. The next day she had to go away into strange lodgings, with hardly any money, without any possibility of her applying again to Rex, without support of any sort. She had never known real poverty, for her “aunt” had always more or less been in funds; and the prospect appalled her. She would face it, however, at all costs, and, the bookbinding failing her, her mind naturally recurred, with a gasp of hope, to the singing.