Now Ivor was not fool enough to confound his weakness with his principles: not entirely. And he had never had any principles in love but love. And so the next afternoon, as he was prowling about the river-bank in preparation for “another go in a minute,” he reasoned between his desire to go to Virginia there and then and the hitch that kept him back. Firstly and mainly, he candidly thought, it’s hurt pride. In fact, it’s only that. But it’s not resentment against her that keeps me from going until to-morrow—it’s just that I want to wipe away all trace of that hurt pride, so that I can meet her clean. Yes, clean.... I can’t go with a nasty secret in my heart. And although I want so much to see her to-day, I shall want to see her so much more to-morrow that the whole thing, hurt pride included, will bubble away in the rush. Oh, yes, oh, yes....
For all that, he spilled his after-dinner coffee. He spilled it by jumping up from his chair as Turner was at his elbow with it. And the cup broke on the table.
“Oh!” said Turner.
“Going to London to-night, Turner!” Ivor cried gaily. What was a coffee-cup?
“But there’s no train now, sir!”
And, having looked at the local guide, there was not.
“What about the car?” Ivor asked.
Turner looked very doubtful about the car.
“Well, we might look anyway,” Ivor said briskly. “Get the key and candle and come along....”
The Misses Cloister-Smiths had not kept a car, but there was a small shed to the right of the house in which such a “car” as Ivor’s could quite well be kept. It was a poor looking car, and it gained rather than lost in the light of the candle that Turner held to it. It was an American car. After the splendid two-seater, the “dear old Camelot car,” had been stolen—that epidemic of car stealing!—Ivor had bought this “off a man”: it was the kind of car that one does buy “off a man.” But Ivor didn’t care what it looked like, so long as it could “get about” and was easily driven with one arm. “It’ll do,” he had said with a grin, when he had first seen it. And it had done, so long as he used it constantly; but once out of commission for any length of time it seemed to retire within itself, and then to show a great disinclination ever to move again. It had now been in the shed for nearly six months, and looked it.