“Sorry, Pollard! Fact is, you touched the wrong nerve. I love that girl Janet like an infatuated Romeo. She sets my frog’s blood on fire. That’s one reason I’m off to Moscow. Running away!”
“Why run?” asked Bertram. “Why not tell her?”
Christy gave another whimsical look at his face in the mirror over the mantelpiece.
“Not in that mug, laddie! Besides—now we’re talking—I’ve got a wife, too, don’t you see, although I don’t live with her? And anyhow, this damned old world of ours don’t lend itself to love-making just now. It’s falling into ruin, and I’m busy watching it. The human equation doesn’t seem to matter, and the ghosts of dead boys, who were robbed of life before their time, mock at my senile passion. I ought to know better at my time of life. I’ll be forty-five in Moscow!”
He made only one other reference to the subject. It was when Bertram left his rooms that night.
“Referring back,” he said, “I might say a parting word, laddie. If you’re not cut out for disloyalty—and it needs a special temperament—cut and run when loyalty’s over-strained. It’s the safest way. . . . And Moscow is an interesting place.”
They gripped hands and wished each other luck. Luck to the book. Luck to the adventure.
“Dashed funny thing—life,” said Christy, leaning over the staircase as Bertram went down.
“It’s all very difficult!”
They both laughed. They had spoken the same words a thousand times in France.