The letter broke off there. Richard, high up in the room of the big hotel, found himself pacing the floor. Back of the carefully penned lines of his mother's letter he could see her slender tense figure, the whiteness of her face, the shadow in her eyes. How often he had seen it when a boy, how often he had sworn that when he was the master of the house he would make her happy.
The telephone rang. It was Eve. "I was afraid you might have left for the hospital."
"I am leaving in a few minutes."
"Can you go for a ride with me?"
"In the afternoon. There's to be another operation—it may be very late before I am through."
"Not too late for dinner out of town somewhere and a ride under the May moon." Her voice rang high and happy.
For the rest of the morning he had no time to think of his own affairs. The operation was extremely rare and interesting, and Austin's skill was superb. Richard felt as if he were taking part in a play, in which the actors were the white clad and competent doctors and nurses, and the stage was the surgical room.
Eve coming for him, found him tired and taciturn. She respected his mood, and said little, and they rode out and out from the town and up and up into the Westchester hills, dotted with dogwood, pink and white like huge nosegays. As the night came on there was the fragrance of the gardens, the lights of the little towns; then once more the shadows as they swept again into the country.
"We will go as far as we dare," Eve said. "I know an adorable place to dine."
She tried more than once to bring him to speak of Austin, but he put her off. "I am dead tired, dear girl; you talk until we have something to eat."