“You are very silent,” she said, sorry at once that she had said it, uncertain as to the trend his speech might follow, and withal curious.
“It was only about that dog,” he said.
She wondered if it was exactly that, and decided it was not. It was not. He was thinking of her husband as he had known him—only by sight and by report. He remembered the florid gentleman perfectly; he had often seen him tooling his four; he had seen him at the traps in Monte Carlo, dividing with the best shot in Italy; he had seen him riding to hounds a few days before that fatal run of the Shadowbrook Hunt, where he had taken his last fence. Once, too, he had seen him at the Sagamore Angling Club up state.
“When are you going?” he said, suddenly.
“To-morrow.”
“I am not to know where?”
“Why should you?” and then, a little quickly: “No, no. It is a pilgrimage.”
“When you return—” he began, but she shook her head.
“No, … no. I do not know where I may be.”
In the April twilight the electric lamps along the avenue snapped alight. The air rang with the metallic chatter of sparrows.