“Ask more.... Ask your heart whether it would care to hear that I am in love. And with whom. Ask your heart if it could ever care to listen to what my heart could say to it.”
“Y-yes—I’ll ask—my heart,” she faltered.... “I think I had better finish dressing——” She lifted her eyes, gave him a breathless smile as he caught her hand and kissed it.
“It—it would be very wonderful,” she stammered, “—if our necessity should be-become our choice.”
But that speech seemed to scare her and she fled, leaving her husband standing tense and upright in the middle of the room.
Their train on the New York Central Railroad left the Grand Central Terminal at one in the afternoon.
Cleves had made his arrangements by wire. They travelled lightly, carrying, except for the clothing they wore, only camping equipment for two.
It was raining in the Hudson valley; they rushed through the outlying towns and Po’keepsie in a summer downpour.
At Hudson the rain slackened. A golden mist enveloped Albany, through which the beautiful tower and façades along the river loomed, masking the huge and clumsy Capitol and the spires beyond.
At Schenectady, rifts overhead revealed glimpses of blue. At Amsterdam, where they descended from the train, the flag on the arsenal across the Mohawk flickered brilliantly in the sunny wind.