She took her bag from the chair where Brian had thrown it as they entered the room, and went out on the landing.
'Good-bye, Mrs. Wendover,' he called after her; 'let me know if I can ever be of any use to you.'
She was going downstairs by this time, and he was looking down at her across the heavy old banister rail.
'I suppose you are going straight to your father's?'
'Yes.'
'Hadn't you better stop and have some lunch? The train doesn't go for hours.'
'No, thanks.'
The gray gown fluttered against the sombre brown panelling as his wife turned the corner of the lower landing and disappeared from his view—perhaps for ever.
Brian went back to his room, and stood in the middle of it, looking round him with a contemplative air. It was a pleasant room, arranged with rather a dandified air—pipes, walking-sticks, old engravings, bric-à-brac—the relics of his college life.
'Well, if she had been more agreeable, I should have had to get new rooms, and that would have been a bore,' he said to himself; and then he sank into a chair, gave a laugh that was half a sob, and wiped a mist of tears from his eyes.