As they walked across the terrace he murmured aloud, “‘Your mother is very unhappy.’ Ursula,” he added, “this alters everything. We must go back to-morrow as early as we can.”
“Yes,” she answered, unemotionally, “I understand.”
He did not say anything more till they had reached their own room. Then, as he struck a light in the dark, he began, with averted face, looming large against the shadows:
“You will like that, at least, among all the sorrow—the going back!”
She tried to answer him, not knowing what, and unexpectedly burst into tears.
Well, it’s a good thing that women can weep. Their feelings are often too complicated for words. The woman who knows herself incapable of tears is surely one-third inarticulate. But, alas, that the act of weeping should be so positively ugly! From a purely æsthetic point of view there is nothing more regrettable in connection with the Fall of Man.
No further news from home reached the young Baron and Baroness during their hurried flight northward. They themselves were quite incapable of fathoming, even from the most materialistic point of view, the magnitude of the change which had come over their prospects. Otto trembled to think in what condition he might find his father’s affairs. Only, he felt certain that the Indian plan would have to be definitely abandoned on account of the estates at home.
The Dominé met the pair at the little Horstwyk station, and as Ursula put her arm round her father’s neck, she dimly realized that selfishness is man’s sole virtue, as, in fact, it is his only vice.