He put up his arm, and raised the trap door. Mrs. Elles raised her hand to intercept his, but let it fall hopelessly down again, on a glance at his set face. The cab stopped and he got out, and standing half on the pavement, and half on the foot-board of the cab, held out his hand.
“Good-bye!” he said, “for the present!”
The reservation was kind in intention, but she would not accept it.
“Good-bye—forever!” was her answer, as her hand, gloveless, out of her muff, went forth to meet his.
“How cold you are!” he said, as he took it. “I am sorry. But it is better I should leave you now, isn’t it? Forgive me for being such a bear, but I have to think for both. I will write if I may?”
“You needn’t,” she whispered, retreating to the corner of the cab, like a wounded animal. “Tell him to go on!”
“Is there anywhere you can tell him to go—some shop—and then discharge him and take a new one? It would be safer!”
“Tell him to go to the New Gallery!” she said, defiantly, and Rivers accordingly did so, and left her.
CHAPTER XIV
Dr. André was waiting for her in the dim-lighted halls of the New Gallery, where large-eyed solemn-faced women, some of them so like Egidia, as she thought, looked down from the walls on Mrs. Elles in her somewhat elf-like prettiness, as of a picture by Tissot. All she had in common with them, was her large wide-open eyes, eyes without depth or mystery, and with unresting lids that had perhaps never drooped to hide an emotion worth the name, or a secret worth the keeping.