“I can’t help it. You are going out of my life. And you’ve always been so strong, and big, and brave. No other man will ever match you.”
When he spoke, his voice had a new and softer note. “I didn’t dream it would hurt you.”
“You might have known.”
The lightning flickering along the horizon showed Adelaide standing beside Towne’s chair.
“Ricky”—the whispered words reached Jane—“kiss me once—to say ‘good-bye.’”
CHAPTER XXVII
FLIGHT
Young Baldwin Barnes, on Saturday morning, ate breakfast alone in the little house. He read his paper and drank his coffee. But the savor of things was gone. He missed Jane. Her engaging chatter, the spirited challenge, even the small irritations. “She is such a darling-dear,” was his homesick meditation.
Oh, a man needed a woman on the other side of the table. And when Jane was married, what then?