Oh, it was too wretched, but brave she would be, and Mrs. Dashwood at least would pity her and understand. What Lady Dashwood thought she did not care so very much.
Gwen went down the steps and got into the car. Robinson Junior did bang the door. He banged it and caught a piece of Gwendolen's skirt. Then he opened the door with ferocity as if it was somebody else's fault. Gwendolen pulled her skirt and he banged the door to again. This time it shut her out from the Lodgings. The last moment had come. The car moved. The two ladies waved their hands. Robinson Junior raised his finger to his ear. The car turned and went out of the Court into the narrow street.
It was all over! Robinson Junior did not come in. He slipped somewhere round at the back with mysterious swiftness, and Lady Dashwood shut the door herself. It was like closing a book at "The End" or writing a last Will and Testament. It was all over!
Then Lady Dashwood, who had been so composed that May had been deceived into thinking that she had almost recovered from her excitement and fatigue, suddenly leaned against the hall table. "May!" she called.
May did not hear her name called, she was already retreating up the staircase to her room as hastily as she dared. There was not much time, and yet she had not told her Aunt Lena yet that she meant to leave that very morning; she had mentioned no hour.
Her luggage was packed and labelled. Her hat and coat and gloves, exactly the things she had arrived in from Malvern, were there waiting for her to put them on and go away. Meanwhile he was in Town, little dreaming of what was happening. He would be back soon. It would be horrible if he arrived before she left, and there was still an hour before she must start for the station! She would put on her hat and then go down, tell her Aunt Lena that she must go in an hour, and talk to her, give herself up to her till the taxi came. No, it would be impossible for him to arrive before she left; she was foolish to worry about it. It was pure nonsense—merely a nervous fear.
When she had put on her hat, it flashed into her mind that Mr. Bingham was coming to dinner, ostensibly to meet her. After their talk together she must write to him. She must scribble a little note and get it taken to All Souls. She must tell him that she had to leave Oxford quite unexpectedly.
She sat down at her writing table and took up a pen. She wrote a few words, and thought the words too cold and too abrupt. She must begin again, and she tore up the letter and threw it into the waste-paper basket. She wanted to write sympathetically and yet not to appear to think he needed sympathy. She wanted to write as if she was very much disappointed at not meeting him again, but without putting it into words that would sound self-assured—as if she knew and counted on his being grateful at her disappointment. And indeed, she thought, he was not much in love with her. Why should he be? That was a question May always asked herself when a man professed to be in love with her. Why? Why in the name of all——, etc. May always failed to see why.
This lack of vanity in May had led many people, who did not understand her, to accuse her of flirting.
But May, in writing to Bingham, realised to the full his attractions. He was too interesting a personality to be going about unclaimed. He ought to make some woman happy—some nice woman—not herself.