An hour later Winthrop came over to Beatrice and held out his hand. “I’m going to slip away,” he said. “Good-night.”
“Going away!” exclaimed Beatrice.
Her voice showed such apparently acute concern that Winthrop wondered how the best of women could be so deceitful, even to be polite.
“I promised some men,” he stammered, “to drive them down-town to see the crowds.”
Beatrice shook her head.
“It’s far too late for that,” she said. “Tell me the real reason.”
Winthrop turned away his eyes.
“Oh! the real reason,” he said gravely, “is the same old reason, the one I’m not allowed to talk about. It’s cruelly hard when I don’t see you,” he went on, slowly dragging out the words, “but it’s harder when I do; so I’m going to say ‘good-night’ and run into town.”
He stood for a moment staring moodily at the floor, and then dropped into a chair beside her.
“And, I believe, I’ve not told you,” he went on, “that on Wednesday I’m running away for good, that is, for a year or two. I’ve made all the fight I can and I lose, and there is no use in my staying on here to—well—to suffer, that is the plain English of it. So,” he continued briskly, “I won’t be here for the ceremony, and this is ‘good-by’ as well as ‘good-night.’”