“That's obvious. Give up Dale.”
She uttered a sound midway between a sob and a laugh, and said, as it seemed, ironically:
“Would you take his place?”
Somewhat ironically, too, I replied, “A crock, my dear lady, with one foot in the grave has no business to put the other into the Pays du Tendre.”
But all the same I had an absurd desire to take her at her word, not for the sake of constituting myself her amant en titre, but so as to dispossess the poor boy who was clamouring wildly for her among his mother's snuffy colleagues in Berlin.
“That's another reason why I shrink from your going in search of my husband,” she said, dabbing her eyes. “Your ill-health.”
“I shall have to go abroad out of this dreadful climate in any case. Doctor's orders. And I might just as well travel about with an object in view as idle in Monte Carlo or Egypt.”
“But you might die!” she cried; and her tone touched my heart.
“I've got to,” I said, as gently as I could; and the moment the words passed my lips I regretted them.
She turned a terrified look on me and seized me by the arms.