‘God help you,’ I said. What else was there to say?
‘There is no such person,’ she replied, gaily. ‘There is only a blessed devil.’
‘Then you go all the way—to the logical conclusion?’
She hardly hesitated. ‘To the logical conclusion. What poor words!’
‘May I ask—when?’
‘I should like to tell you that quite definitely, and I think I can. The English mail leaves tonight.’
‘And you have arranged to take it?’
‘We have arranged nothing. Do you know’—she smiled as if at the fresh colours of an idyll—‘we have not even come to the admission? There has been between us no word, no vision. Ah, we have gone in bonds, and dumb! Hours we have had, exquisite hours of the spirit, but never a moment of the heart, a moment confessed. It was mine to give—that moment, and he has waited—I know—wondering whether perhaps it would ever come. And today—we are going for a ride today, and I do not think we shall come back.’
‘O Judy,’ I cried, catching at her sleeve, ‘he is only a boy!’
‘There were times when I thought that conclusive. Now the misery of it has gone to sleep; don’t waken it. It pleases me to believe that the years are a convention. I never had any dignity, you know, and I seem to have missed the moral deliverance. I only want—oh, you know what I want. Why don’t you open your telegram?’