“Let us,” she said.
A great silence fell upon them, and they sat there side by side for a long, long time, pretending to watch, like many other couples and groups in the lounge, the shifting life of the great hotel, but really far away from it all, feeling drawn together in their new-found shame like two dreary souls who had escaped from Purgatory and were wandering through darkness they knew not whither.
CHAPTER XVI
The great train thundered on straight down through the heart of France. Almost the length of it separated Quixtus and Clementina. They had seen each other only for a few moments amid the bustle of the hurrying platform—just long enough for her quick vision to perceive, in the uncertain blue light of the arc-lamps, a haunted look in his eyes that was absent when she had first met him that afternoon. He had spoken a few courteous phrases; he had inquired whether Tommy and Etta, who clung to her to the last, were to be fellow travellers, whereon Clementina had very definitely informed him that Etta was staying with friends in Paris, while Tommy had arranged to visit a painter chum at Barbizon; he had expressed the hope that when they arrived at Marseilles she would command his services, and, after a bareheaded leave-taking of the two ladies, which caused Etta afterwards to remark that it was only her short skirt that had prevented her from making her court curtsey, he had gone in search of his own compartment.
Etta had flung her arms round Clementina’s neck.
“Oh, Clementina darling, do come back soon! The Jacksons are kind, but, oh, so stuffy! And Tommy is going to Barbizon, and I shan’t see him, and if you don’t come back soon, he’ll have forgotten all about me.”
Tommy had given her a great hug and kissed her.
“Good-bye, dear. God bless you. Come back soon. We can’t do without you.”
And Clementina, pausing on the first step of the railway carriage, had turned and raised her hand—the unfilled finger-ends of her cotton gloves projecting comically—and cried:
“Good-bye, you dear, selfish, detestable, beloved children!”