“No, your company would be too distracting. I must be unobtrusively on the watch, you know.”
Wylie departed without a murmur, possibly a little to Zoe’s disappointment, and only returned, equipped for riding, about two hours later.
“Now for it!” said Zoe. “I must take my courage in both hands. Shall I save the situation, or shall I ruin it?”
“But don’t you think it’s all right by this time?”
“Not a bit. Every now and then I have heard what they said, and it was always ‘Do you remember?’ like children talking over a Sunday-school treat. I might have sat with them the whole time. Well, now to interrupt them. Doesn’t it make you feel a brute?”
“Not in the least, nor you either. You know perfectly well that you feel like a whole three-volume novel, or a goddess out of a machine, or anything else that annihilates time and space to make two lovers happy.”
Zoe looked at him critically. “You mustn’t thought-read to such an extent,” she said, “or I shall be afraid of you. It’s uncanny. Now I am going to make the plunge. Eirene, are you ready? Captain Wylie is waiting to start.”
“Start? Where to?” demanded Maurice.
“For Therma, of course, to take Eirene’s letter. If she is to get back to-night, she must be sent for.”
“With these outrages still going on, when she has barely escaped with her life already? Nonsense! she can’t go back.”