“You mean—you can’t come with me?”
She bowed her head.
There was no sound in the little vine-shaded salon. Carey looked out across the screen of leaves, and noticed the motionless pine-tops against the hot blue sky. His eyes travelled down their red trunks to the sunny garden, to the scarlet zinnias burning amidst the long grass, to the curly yellow dog lying with his nose between his paws on the hot flagstones before the door.
“Why?” he asked, turning his eyes from the garden to where Bridget sat.
She gave a long trembling sigh. “Because of mother.”
Again a quick light of hope flashed into his eyes.
“Yes—yes!” he said eagerly—“I see. Of course just now—in the midst of her trouble—dear, we must wait, of course. I—”
“It is not because of that,” she interrupted, in an even toneless voice. Then, with a restless movement—“Oh, Larry! It must come! I must, yet I know I can’t explain!” she cried, with a sharp note of misery in her voice.
“Listen!” she went on, desperately. “Of course you will think that it’s—father’s death, that has made me see things in a new light; but it isn’t—it isn’t. It drew the veil from before myself—my nature—a little sooner, that’s all. It would have come anyway,” she murmured. “See!” she turned to him with trembling lips—“I had decided. I had told Helen yesterday—I had justified myself. I told her what I had been telling myself for weeks, that it would be mad, foolish, weak, to let mother’s prejudices spoil my life.”
“And mine—” he interrupted, tersely.