“Perhaps it is just as well,” Mrs. Wilbur answered indifferently. “Anyway, I shall be going away soon.”
“So you have made up your mind. What are you going to do with yourself?”
“How do I know? What can a woman who has dabbled in life all round do with herself, except begin over and dabble all round again?”
“Why don’t you make a profession of freedom, now you have given up trying the straddle?”
She did not like the phrase, “profession of freedom”: it sounded like a fine way of saying “abandon yourself.” Just then some one touched her elbow, and Erard was swallowed up in the surrounding hubbub. She never saw him again in Chicago.
She found herself talking excitedly, yet with a grateful calm at her heart. The room, and the people who were constantly addressing her, seemed very unsubstantial. They belonged to her house on the boulevard, to the traction stocks, the little child who had gone, to the drunken governor who had sold himself to Mephisto, to Dr. Driver, and the rest of it. They were not a part of her now, and she was gay in the thought.
“Molly,” she said at last, “dismiss Thornton Jennings and go fetch your wrap. I am going to drive you home.”
Molly Parker faltered, “You are going to tell me something dreadful.”
But Mrs. Wilbur, if she had anything dreadful on her mind, appeared serene on their drive home. She talked about Jennings a good deal, and watched her companion slyly. “Would you like to leave Chicago now, Molly?”
Miss Parker blushed and kissed her. At the iron gate of the Wilbur house she stepped out of the carriage, directing the coachman to drive Miss Parker home. Then as if to communicate a last nothing, she put her head through the window, and said hurriedly, “Molly, I’m going away soon. I promised to let you know.”