Her departure cleared Eric's mind of its last misgivings and convinced him that Barbara was no longer a casually pleasant companion but an urgently needed wife. In her absence, he was thrown back on the bachelor society of the Thespian Club, though with every meal that he ate there came a growing dread that he would be absorbed into it until younger generations, watching him as he pored over the day's bill of fare with his cronies or grew petulant with the servants, came to regard him as part of the club's furniture—as part of every club's furniture—wifeless, childless, friendless and uninterested, a bore who had outstayed the welcome and even the toleration of a community founded to keep his like from utter loneliness. Sometimes, as he looked at the men who would never marry, he wondered what would become of him if Jack Waring appeared suddenly, if Barbara fell in love with some one else, if she fell out of love as quickly as she had fallen in love.…
At the end of March a telegram from Folkestone announced her return and invited him to dine with her.
Eric walked up the familiar stairs, with the august butler, at whose nod or frown he had once trembled, turning at intervals to impart confidences from the advantageous height of an advance stair. ("We" had only come back the day before and were, on the whole, better for the change. He was afraid her ladyship would hardly be dressed yet.… If Mr. Lane did not mind waiting a moment.… There was the evening paper.…) Eric settled himself with a comfortable sense of home-coming, his eyes on Barbara's bedroom door, wondering how she would greet him. Their last dinner together demanded recognition and a subtile modification of manner.
"Darling, how are you after all this time?" Barbara was on her knees by his chair before he realized that she was in the room. "When do you start? You never said a word about it in your letters."
He stood up and pulled her gently to her feet. Invitingly she craned her head forward, offering him her lips.
"About what?"
"Your American tour. The Vieux boulevardier said you were going to deliver a course of lectures in America."
Common-form invitations had reached him from time to time through his agent, but, after the first, he had relegated them unread to the waste-paper basket. And his department was still urging him abroad.
"I've no intention of going yet awhile," he told her. "It was only a newspaper rumour; perhaps some day I shall make it true. You remember that there was another rumour which my mother told me had in fact got into some provincial rag? Some day that also may be true."
He lighted a cigarette and looked at her with a faint, enquiring smile.