"My dear, you'll have only yourself to blame."
"I know. Bless you, dear Eric. Somehow, I was afraid you might have changed. Thinking of you all those miles away, I felt you were too good to be true. Let's go down to dinner. You've only got me, I'm afraid. Will you be bored?"
"I don't suppose so," he answered, smiling; but, indefinably, he was disappointed.
2
The Crawleighs spent a month in London before repairing to Hampshire for the summer.
"Make the most of me," said Barbara, when her father's decision was made known. "You may never see me again."
"I wonder whether you'd mind," Eric mused. "Don't you sometimes feel that I've served my turn?"
"That's a horrid thing to say! If anything took you out of my life … Say you're sorry this very moment!"
Eric laughingly complied, but he could not easily shake off his disappointment that Barbara had come back after three months without nerving herself to make a decision. Though Jack Waring's name was still never mentioned, he felt that she was increasingly unreasonable in honouring any superstitious obligation to his memory. A vague, resentful impatience ruffled the serenity of their meetings; and, though they plotted to lunch or dine together daily and counted the remaining hours with jealous concern, Eric was shocked to find himself secretly relieved when Barbara said "Only another week."
"I've not seen very much of you," he grumbled inconsistently. "Why don't you dine with me to-morrow?"