And now Aunt Maude, more than ever mummified in a gold and black brocade wrap trimmed with black fur, steered her uncertain way toward the motor at the door.
"People in my time——" floated over her shoulder and then as the door closed behind her, her eloquence was lost.
Eve, alone, faced a radiant prospect. Richard was coming. He had telephoned. She had not told Aunt Maude. She wanted him to herself.
When at last he arrived she positively crowed over him. "Oh, Dicky, this is darling of you."
A shadow fell across her face, however, when he told her why he had come.
"Austin wanted me with him in an operation. He telegraphed me and I took the first train. I have been here for two days without a minute's time in which to call you up."
"I thought that perhaps you had come to see me."
"Seeing you is a pleasant part of it, Eve."
He was really glad to see her; to be drawn away by it all from the somberness of his thoughts. The night before he had left the train on the Jersey side and had ferried over so that he might view once more the sky-line of the great city. There had been a stiff breeze blowing and it had seemed to him that he drew the first full breath since the moment when he had walked with Geoffrey in the wood. What had followed had been like a dream; the knowledge that the great surgeon wanted him, his mother's quick service in helping him pack his bag, the walk to Bower's in the fragrant dark to catch the ten o'clock train; the moment on the porch at Bower's when he had learned from a word dropped by Beulah that Anne was on the river with Geoffrey.
And now it all seemed so far away—the river with the moon's broad path, Bower's low house and its yellow-lighted panes, the silence, the darkness.
