"'Getting on,' yes, God forgive you," he said mournfully, "and that's all you're doing, Jane Vail!"
"I consider you incapable of judging a matter like this," said Jane with cool disdain. "You see life always through a stained-glass window and it gives you distorted values. What do you mean,—only 'getting on'?"
"Wasn't it yourself told me what you said to your friend back in the village—that you were 'going on'? Woman dear," the purling brogue dropped an octave, "there's the wide world of difference between the two! 'Getting on' you are surely, the way your name screams from the billboards and your bank balance fattens like a stalled ox, but are you 'going on,' Jane Vail? Are you 'going on'? Woman, dear," the purling brogue—"the rare, high places you can climb if you will? Or will you stop content with the pavement, the likes of you that was made for the mountain peaks? Are you going on, I say? Answer me, Jane Vail!"
But instead, with flashing eyes and scorching cheeks she took leave of him, requesting him curtly not to follow, and walked alone to the Drive and hailed a bus, and sat staring darkly ahead of her as it jolted and swayed down the long blocks to Washington Square.
When Michael Daragh came down to breakfast next day he found the dining room in a state of excited conjecture. Miss Vail, dressed for a journey, had roused Mrs. Hills at six in the morning to say that she was going out of town for several weeks, and had immediately driven off in a taxi with her handbag and suitcase, her steamer trunk and her typewriter.
Nevertheless, when Emma Ellis came in to luncheon, a little early, the third day following, she espied at Michael Daragh's place a letter with a Boston postmark, addressed in a firm, small hand she knew. She was the only person in the room and she had time to examine it thoroughly, even as to thickness, before Mrs. Hills came in. It happened that there were mail deliveries just before the three meal times and it was the boarding-house keeper's guileless custom to sort and distribute letters at the table, thus saving a wearisome climb and much pedestrianism through long halls.
"Well, I've got a line from Jane and I'm free to say I'm relieved. I was afraid she was sick or something, rushing off like that, rousing me out of a sound sleep at six in the morning, just saying she was going out of town. I supposed, of course, she was going home to her Aunt Lydia Vail."
"Didn't she?"
"No, she didn't." Mrs. Hills took the note out of her apron pocket and consulted it. "No, she's going to Maine. Foot'n alone. Says she needs quiet for some special work."