"Nothing—none of my business."
"Yes, please! My dying request!"
"Well, I was going to tell you to be sure to take plenty of warm things for the voyage. Men are so silly about such things!"
As with Madge a minute ago, all sorts of things shouted to be done and said in his brain, but he shut the door firmly on all of them and replied quietly, "All right, I will," and started toward the door.
She could not let it go at that, after all. Before the door had swung to behind him she had rushed up and caught it.
"Oh, Harry!" she exclaimed; "if it does—if it should come off, wouldn't it be simply—Nirvana, and that sort of thing?"
"Madge," replied Harry solemnly from the doorstep, "it will make Nirvana look like the Black Hole of Calcutta!"
If there rose in her mind one pang of remorse for her behavior that evening, one suggestion of a desire to rush out on the doorstep and fling herself into his arms and tell him what a fool she was, it was reduced to subjection before she had closed the door and entirely smothered by the time she reached the parlor again.
"No," she told herself quite firmly as she rearranged the tumbled sofa cushions, "that would never do—that was part of the Bargain." Just what was part of the bargain or exactly what the bargain was she did not bother to specify. "No, I must wait," she continued, trying the locks of the windows; "I must wait, a long time, a long, long time. Till next September, in fact. One always has to wait to find out; nothing but time can show. And of course one must be sure"—she turned out the gas—"first. Perfectly sure—beyond all manner of doubt and question. Both on my own account"—she reached up with considerable effort and turned out the hall light—"and Harry's."
"No," she amended as she felt with her foot for the first step of the dark staircase; "not on my account. On Harry's."