Then, one afternoon late in May, when for four days Dick had not seen Elizabeth, suddenly he found the decision as to their relation taken out of his hands, and by Elizabeth herself.
He opened the door one afternoon to find her sitting alone in the waiting-room, clearly very frightened and almost inarticulate. He could not speak at all at first, and when he did his voice, to his dismay, was distinctly husky.
“Is anything wrong?” he asked, in a tone which was fairly sepulchral.
“That's what I want to know, Dick.”
Suddenly he found himself violently angry. Not at her, of course. At everything.
“Wrong?” he said, savagely. “Yes. Everything is wrong!”
Then he was angry! She went rather pale.
“What have I done, Dick?”
As suddenly as he had been fierce he was abject and ashamed. Startled, too.
“You?” he said. “What have you done? You're the only thing that's right in a wrong world. You—”