"What has happened?" Cecily demanded.
"Nothing has happened," responded her weary little mother, and refused to discuss the matter further.
But to herself she was beginning to admit that she had lost Landry. An hour later she had a telephone message from him.
"I want you to go with me for a last ride together," he said. "I leave to-morrow."
"To-morrow!" Her voice showed her dismay.
"But why this sudden decision—"
"I have played long enough," he said; "business calls—"
As Mrs. Beale made ready for the ride she surveyed herself wistfully in her mirror. There were shadows under her eyes, and faint little lines toward the corners of her lips—it even seemed to her that her chin sagged. She had a sudden sense of revolt. "If I were young, really young," she thought, "he would not be going away—"
With this idea firmly fixed in her mind, she exerted herself to please him; and her little laugh made artificial music in his ears, her fixed smile wore upon his nerves, her staccato questions irritated him.
Again they had dinner together, and as she sat opposite him, gorgeous and gay in her gown of geranium red, he began to talk with her of her daughter.