He arose quickly, with a motion of tossing off an ugly sensation. “I am very much engaged; I do not know when I can come again. We are going west for the winter.”
She could not lift her eyes, or speak, or catch her breath. She arose, slowly, as if the movement were almost too great an effort, and stood leaning against the tall chair, her fingers fumbling with the fringe of the tidy; the room had become so darkened that the white fringe was but a dark outline of something that she could feel.
“Sue Greyson is to accompany my mother; I shall be much away, and I do not like to leave her with strangers.”
“Sue is pleasant and lively.” She had spoken, and now she could, not quite clearly yet, but a glance revealed the blood surging to his forehead, the veins swollen in his temples, even through the heavy mustache she discerned the twitching of his lips. The pain in her heart had opened her eyes wide. Had he come to make the parting final? What had she done that he should thus thrust her away outside of all the interests in his life? Did he know how she cared, and was he so sorry? Was he trying to be “patient,” as his mother had advised—patient with her for taking him at his word?
Dunellen had called her proud; this instant she was as humble as a child.
Slowly and sorrowfully she said, “Come again—some time.”
“Yes,” he said, as slowly and as sorrowfully, “I will.”
He was very sorry for this woman who had been so foolish as to think that his words had meant so much.
She had closed the street door and was on the first step of the stairs when her mother called to her from the sitting-room.
“What did Sir Dignified Undemonstrative have to say for himself?”