"She is coming back, isn't she?"
"I hope so."
"Don't you know?"
She looked into his anxious and miserable face and gently shook her head:
"I don't know, Kelly."
"Didn't she say—intimate anything—"
"No…. I don't think she knows—yet."
He said, very quietly: "If she ever comes to any conclusion that it is better for us both never to meet again—I might be as dead as Querida for any work I should ever again set hand to.
"If she will not marry me, but will let things remain as they are, at least I can go on caring for her and working out this miserable problem of life. But if she goes out of my life, life will go out of me. I know that now."
Rita looked at him pitifully: