"The air has done you good," he went on. "We shall soon see the roses in your cheeks again."
"If you have anything to say, James, perhaps you'd better go ahead and say it."
"I? Oh, dear no! Any words of mine would be quite superfluous. The situation is complete as it is."
Beatrice merely waited. She knew she would not wait in vain, nor did she.
"Only, after this perhaps you'll save yourself the trouble of making up elaborate denials. You and your Tommy!..."
He got up and started walking up and down the room with slow, measured steps. To Beatrice, still sitting quietly on the edge of her bed, the fall of his feet on the carpeted floor sounded like the inexorable tick of fate for once made audible to human ears. The greatest things hung in the balance at this moment; his next words would decide both their destinies for the rest of their mortal life. She thought she knew what they would be, but if there were to sound in them the faintest echo of a regret for older and better times she was ready, even at this last moment, to throw her whole being into an effort to help restore them. Tommy's passionate whisper still echoed in her ears, Tommy's kisses were scarcely cold upon her cheeks, but Tommy was not in her heart.
At last James spoke. At the first sound of his voice Beatrice knew.
"I shall receive a telegram calling me back to town to-morrow, in time for me to catch the evening train...."
She was so occupied with the ultimate meaning of his words that their immediate meaning escaped her. She raised her eyes in question.
"You're going away to-morrow? Why?"