"I've just been thinking about it. I guess I can't do anything else—I mean I don't want to go anywhere alone. I guess that's pretty plain, isn't it—what I mean?"
She leaned back against the wall and looked at him; it was as if she could not take her eyes from his face.
"Perhaps I oughtn't to expect you to say anything now," he went on. "I just thought if you felt anything like I did, you'd know pretty well, by this time, whether it was yes or no."
She was still looking at him. He had said it all, and now he waited, his fists knotted tightly, and a peculiar expression on his face, almost as if he were smiling, but it came from a part of his nature that had never before got to the surface. Finally she said:—
"I think we'd better go back."
He did not seem to understand, and she turned away and started off alone. In a moment he was at her side. He guided her back as they had come, and neither spoke until they had reached the stairway. Then he said, in a low tone that the carpenters could not hear:—
"You don't mean that—that you can't do it?"
She shook her head and hurried to the office.
CHAPTER XVI
Bannon stood looking after her until she disappeared in the shadow of an arc lamp, and after that he continued a long time staring into the blot of darkness where the office was. At last the window became faintly luminous, as some one lighted the wall lamp; then, as if it were a signal he had been waiting for, Bannon turned away.