“Denver.”
“With what paper?”
“None, for a time. It’s like this.” He paused, seemed to be searching for words, his hands clenched and unclenched nervously. “I’ve been seeing Frothingham, the specialist, you know. Oh, it’s nothing—contraction in the chest now and then and bit of a cough in bad weather. Beastly uncomfortable, though. He tells me if I go now I can get rid of it in six months or so.”
Goring gazed at the breadth of shoulder on which her head had snuggled so peacefully in the old days. Not that that phase of it occurred to her just then, but she stared at the big frame and could scarcely credit what he told her.
“But how in the world did you get such a thing?”
“It got me, my dear,—before I knew it. Fellow living alone’s apt to grow careless. Anyway, there it is, and it’s up to me to light out.”
Silence again for a moment, then—“I’m sorry, old boy,” she murmured.
“That’s good to know.” He slid nearer to her along the couch. Her face through the pungent smoke from the Egyptian cigarette was an indefinite white blur, vague as a dream, impossible to read. “I was hoping, in a way, that you would be. Makes it easier for me to put up the proposition I have in mind.”
“Yes?” she questioned as he paused again.
“But first I want to outline something of my plans once I knock this bug on the head.”