Her eye lit up, and she began to speak impatiently, then checked herself.
"Now, say just what you were going to say."
She laughed. "I was going to be barefaced enough to ask you to take Tony as well. He has been in camp, with his O.T.C., but he comes to London to-morrow, and I want him to have a good time."
"By all means. Couldn't you get away half an hour sooner?"
She shook her head. "I must stay until they turn me out; Pansy would fret if I did not. But I will be as punctual as I can, and tell mother and Tony to come round to Queen Anne Street."
"On no account! I shall fetch them from Margaret Street on my way to you."
"You are very kind and thoughtful," she responded joyfully. "I do feel that a motor run would do me good after all those hours in the sick room."
For the first few days Virginia said nothing of her meeting with Gerald in her letters to Gaunt. This was not because she wished to hide them, but because she habitually mentioned only such points as seemed essential--Pansy's progress and her own expenditure. Tony's expenses, her mother's club dinners and theatres, came out of her own private allowance. It was wonderful how far a pound could be made to go in museums and picture palaces for Tony's benefit. After a few days, however, she thought it better to mention what was going on, lest her husband should think there might be something clandestine about it. She wrote accordingly, in answer to his demand for an account of her own health:
_I have been feeling very much better lately, for Mr. Rosenberg--whom I met last week in the street, and who told me he had been to Perley Hatch, and had seen you--has been taking mother and me for drives in the evening. His people are out of town, and he has the car to himself. We have been to Windsor and Burnham Beeches, to Virginia Water, and all sorts of places. The air does me a great deal of good. I am really quite well now._
Gaunt read it grimly. He told himself that he might have expected it. Was it likely that Rosenberg would leave her alone, having learned that she was in London without him?
The test was growing more acute, the shadowy tie, which bound her to him, more attenuated. She would never come back. He went into the little sitting-room, wherein the decorators were at work, and wondered at his own folly. He was carrying that folly to an absurd pitch. He was having a copy executed of the statue of Love from the Wallace collection. It was to stand upon a column in the charming semicircular bay window, looking out upon the prim terrace garden.