"I have some fear that you will not like it."
"If you have done it, Adam, I shall like it. If I do not like it, you will never know it. Tell me. You did not go to view the country. I know that well enough."
"Well," I began, and stopped, somewhat troubled. Scraps of talk had drifted out to us, now and then, from that room we had left, and by turning we could get a glimpse of one or another, sitting in the dim yellow light.
Bobby had just said something, and then there fell a sudden silence—absolute silence. It was the silence that stopped me, and I cast back over my unconscious recollection to see if I knew what he had said. And the things that had happened in there in the last minute took gradual shape in my mind, as things sometimes do that are heard with the ear but not consciously noted. Old Goodwin had asked Bobby some question, I know not what, and Bobby had answered him in a dull, dead sort of voice. I recalled the voice because it was strange for Bobby to use it; but he had done many strange things. What had he said in that dull, indifferent voice that sounded as if all that he cared for were destroyed utterly? I had it, and so did Eve. It had not taken a half a minute. He had announced that he was to go to England and join a destroyer.
No one had spoken in that half-minute, and I peeked through at Elizabeth. She was sitting as she had been for some time, the same half-smile upon her lips, her hands in her lap; but I saw that her hands were clasped together and every muscle tense.
"Rather sudden news, Bobby," said Cecily at last. "You don't seem as glad as I should have supposed you would be."
"Oh, yes," Bobby answered, "I'm glad enough. I've had enough of chasing phantoms. There are no submarines over here. I have some reason to believe that it is different over there. There is nothing, I think," he added rather bitterly, "to keep me over here—no reason why I should not be glad to go."
Again that silence fell. I saw Elizabeth's hands twisting slightly, clasped in her lap.