She looked over her shoulder.
“That’s all right, Arthur—don’t delay. I’ve got to see to so many things, if we’re to break up in two days. But—you don’t mind now if I write to father? You know I’ve kept the pact and remained in mysterious retreat, but since your breaking it to-day I can, of course, break it, too.”
She saw his hesitation, saw his face redden as he reached for his hat and coat, but she waited quietly, offering no assistance of any kind.
“Why, of course, Di, but”—he laughed weakly—“couldn’t you wait until I come back?”
“Until to-night? Oh, if you wish it! But then I think I’ll call him up on the long-distance. I should like to know just how he is.”
“Of course!” He came across the room to bid her an affectionate good-by. “I hate to go—to break it up—but I must.”
She assented, and stood in the doorway, watching him walk rapidly down the lane. At the end of it he turned and raised his hat, waving it to her.
She returned to her housewifely duties, gave a few directions to the little maid, and began to pack the few belongings that she had brought with her. She was amazed at her own eagerness to go. They had imagined much happiness in this quiet spot, but it had eluded them. She knew that it had eluded Faunce, for he had scarcely slept since they had been there, and his restlessness, his uneasy, haunted look, had utterly broken down her own effort to be happy at any cost.
She paused in her thoughts with a shock of feeling which flooded her consciousness with a lucidity, an insight, that appalled her. Had they both been disappointed? Had the torch of Psyche been lifted by unsteady hands and fallen into an abyss between them?
Unable to endure her own thoughts, Diane thrust aside her work and went out. She needed to escape the thraldom of four walls and try—in the open—to vanquish the haunting spirits that might well have escaped from the secret caverns of those lovely hills to assail her with a fantom host of doubts.